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WOMAN'S  WRONGS: 


A    COUNTER-IRRITANT. 


BY 


GAIL    HAMILTON.       r-c.=>. 


"Si  quid  novisti  rectius  istis, 
Candidus  imperti ;  m  non,  his  utere  mecum." 


BOSTON: 
TICKNOR     AND    FIELDS, 

1868. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1868,  by 

TICKNOR     AND     FIELDS, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


University  Press  :  Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co., 
Cambridge. 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 


THE  friendliness  existing  between  wo- 
men and  clergymen,  though  not 
usually  considered  especially  complimen- 
tary to  either  class,  is  a  matter  of  com- 
mon recognition.  It  is  generally  referred 
to  with  a  certain  half-bantering  conde- 
scension, that  sometimes  scarcely  stops 
short  of  a  sneer.  Yet  this  friendliness 
is  in  part,  at  least,  founded  on  a  law  of 
human  nature  which  it  is  not  wise  to 
overlook.  Clergymen,  whatever  may  be 
their  theories  about  woman,  are  forced 
by  the  very  exigencies  of  their  profes- 
sion to  treat  women  as  independent  hu- 
man beings.  The  teachings  and  the 
example  of  the   Divine  Master  are  too 


2  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

plain  to  be  misinterpreted,  and  the  is- 
sues too  momentous  to  be  neglected. 
The  clergyman  more  than  any  other 
looks  at  woman  from  the  pure  point  of 
soul.  He  knows  that,  notwithstanding 
all  the  dictates  of  conventional  propriety, 
truth  and  nature,  in  supreme  interests, 
assert  their  sway ;  and  a  woman's  soul  is 
to  him  just  as  self-centred,  just  as  re- 
sponsible, just  as  important,  as  a  man's 
soul.  All  talk  of  incompleteness  and  de- 
pendence, of  oaks  and  vines,  is  hushed 
before  the  Divine  voice :  "  If  thou  be 
wise,  thou  shalt  be  wise  for  thyself;  but 
if  thou  scornest,  thou  alone  shalt  bear  it." 
When  this  voice  finds  no  echo  in  the 
clergyman's  soul ;  when  this  respect  is 
simply  conventional,  enforced  by  the  re- 
quirements of  his  profession,  active  only 
in  one  direction,  having  no  influence  over 
his  every-day  opinions ;  when  his  spirit 
is  not  elevated  by  the  language  he  uses, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  8 

by  the  air  he  breathes,  —  he  sinks  lower 
than  his  fellows.  The  very  fact  that  he 
can  resist  such  influences  indicates  a  soul 
indissolubly  wedded  to  earthliness,  and 
we  may  confidently  count  on  finding  a 
conscience  insensible  to  appeal,  conceit 
impenetrable  to  facts,  a  sensuality  inca- 
pable of  purification,  a  character  beyond 
reclamation. 

The  Kev.  John  Todd,  D.  D.  has 
lately  been  moved  to  announce  and  ex- 
pound the  laws  of  human  life,  especially 
in  their  bearing  upon  the  relations  be- 
tween man  and  woman.  He  has  done 
so  with  a  wisdom  accurately  described  by 
James  in  the  fifteenth  verse  of  the  third 
chapter  of  his  Epistle.  If  to  diminish 
disgust  of  vice,  and  to  destroy  the  charm 
of  innocence,  be  success,  he  has  indeed 
achieved  a  singular  success.  He  turned 
his  attention  to  a  thing, 

"  Horrible,  hateful,  monstrous,  not  to  be  told," 


4  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

and  he  so  managed  to  overlay  it  with 
impotent  and  sometimes  ridiculous  logic, 
with  ill-directed  denunciation,  with  irrev- 
erent assumption  of  Divine  prerogatives, 
with  Scriptural  misrepresentations,  with 
a  kind  of  talk  for  which  the  popular 
phrase  "  silly  sentimentalism  "  is  too  sub- 
stantial, and  which  is  better  described 
by  sentimental  silliness,  that  pious  fatu- 
ity did  the  work  of  infernal  cleverness, 
and  the  original  offence  seemed  likely 
to  escape  its  just  condemnation  through 
scorn  of  the  folly  and  immorality  directed 
against  it.  He  touched  a  sacrament,  and 
it  shrivelled  into  profanity.  Marriage 
became  in  his  hands  a  base  commercial 
transaction.  Woman  was  reduced  to  the 
level  of  the  beasts  that  perish.  What  is 
beyond  the  province  of  reasoning  he  did 
not  scruple  to  force  under  the  yoke  of 
his  sophistry.  Things  secret  and  sacred, 
the  soul's  most  solemn  symbolism,  God's 


WOMAN'S  WEONGS.  5 

own  trust  to  the  hidden  heart  of  human- 
ity, too  deep,  too  holy,  too  awful  for 
sound,  or  sight,  or  touch,  he  brought  out 
remorselessly  to  the  blare  of  argument, 
and  the  glare  of  ambition,  and  the  stare 
of  stupidity. 

Through  the  rank  growths  of  selfish- 
ness his  words  spread  like  prairie  fire. 
A  gospel  that  preaches  masculine  self- 
gratification  as  manly  religion,  the  low- 
est womanly  subserviency  to  man  as  the 
sole  womanly  way  of  doing  God  service, 
is  not  the  boon  of  every  day,  nor  to  be 
lightly  let  slip.  Its  improbabilities,  its  in- 
consistencies, its  monstrosities,  seemed  to 
go  down  sweetly,  like  the  grapes  of  Beu- 
lah.  Clerical  conferences  passed  resolu- 
tions fortifying  Dr.  Todd's  position.  "  Ke- 
ligious  "  newspapers  hastened  to  give  him 
their  sanction.  Secular  newspapers  be- 
came suddenly  devout,  and,  ranging 
themselves  by  the  side  of  their  religious 


6  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

brethren,  went  singing  Te  Deums  after 
Dr.  Todd.  The  piety  of  it,  lago,  the 
piety  of  it !  Liberal  Christian  and  big- 
oted Puritan,  man  of  God  and  man  of 
the  world,  all  who  loved  themselves  bet- 
ter than  righteousness,  who  would  rejoice 
to  see  iniquity  framed  into  a  moral  law 
and  transmuted  into  gospel,  —  all,  for 
once,  laid  down  the  weapons  of  their 
warfare,  and  joined  in  the  holy  shout, 
"  There  is  no  god  but  God,  and  Dr.  Todd 
is  his  prophet!" 

Into  the  region  whither  Dr.  Todd  thus 
betook  himself  it  is  not  permitted  to  fol- 
low him.  Over  the  new  heaven  and  the 
new  earth  of  his  own  creation  he  must 
hold  undisputed  sway.  But  whom  the 
gods  will  destroy  they  first  make  mad. 
Deceived,  probably,  by  the  silence  of 
those  whose  disapproval  was  not  the  less 
deep  because  unspoken,  mistaking  the 
noisy  applause  of  selfishness  and  thought- 


WOMAN'S  WKONGS.  7 

lessness  for  the  verdict  of  virtue,  he  has 
ventured  forth  into  a  field  where  it  is 
possible  to  meet  him ;  he  has  put  his 
hand  to  things  which  it  is  not  desecra- 
tion to  handle  ;  and  I  propose  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  opportunity  which  he  has 
himself  furnished  to  examine,  for  a  few 
moments,  the  calibre  of  this  man  who  has 
been  so  suddenly  set  up  as  a  moral  law- 
giver to  woman. 

In  late  issues  of  an  able,  if  not  the 
leading,  religious  newspaper  of  New  Eng- 
land, appeared  a  series  of  articles  from 
the  pen  of  Dr.  Todd,  entitled  "  Women's 
Eights."  The  newspaper  thus  recom- 
mends them  :  "  The  principles  advanced 
and  urged  with  the  author's  customary 
felicity  of  thought  and  expression  are 
such,  we  think,  as  will  meet  the  views 
of  our  readers."  The  same  articles  have 
just  been  published  in  book  or  pamphlet 
form  —  I  have   not  seen  the   republica- 


8  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

tion  —  by  a  Boston  house ;  and  an  able, 
if  not  the  leading,  secular  newspaper 
of  New  England  declares  the  book  to 
be  "  full  of  good  strong  common-sense, 
which  will  commend  it  to  the  great  ma- 
jority of  American  women."  I  have 
dihgently  examined  the  critical  notices 
of  the  press,  and  have  found  this  opinion 
echoed,  East  and  West,  with  scarcely  a 
dissenting  voice.  It  is  this  essay  to  which 
I  beg  to  call  attention.  The  authority 
given  it  by  its  indorsers  is  my  only  apol- 
ogy for  detaining  the  reader  over  asser- 
tions that  are  either  baseless  or  purpose- 
less, and  arguments  that  have  been  a 
thousand  times  refuted. 

Dr.  Todd  begins  with  a  mixture  of 
majesty  and  sweetness  at  once  imposing 
and  conciliating. 

"  Sound,  as  it  goes  from  the  bell  in 
the  church-tower,  probably  goes  in  waves 
and   curves,   and   not   in   straight   Hues. 


WOMAN'S  WEONGS.  9 

Human  feeling  and  thought  seem  to 
move  in  tidal  waves,  modified,  doubtless, 
by  the  peculiarities  of  the  age.  At  one 
time  the  women  of  Kome  became  so  dis- 
couraged and  down-hearted  wdth  their 
condition,  that  they  committed  suicide  to 
such  an  extent  that  the  Senate,  alarmed, 
passed  a  decree  that  all  who  should  here- 
after commit  suicide  should  have  their 
bodies  exposed  naked  in  the  streets. 
The  instincts  of  modesty  came  to  wo- 
man's aid,  and  there  were  no  more  sui- 
cides. On  the  true  instincts  of  the  sex 
I  rely,  while  I  speak  to  the  women  of 
my  generation  kindly,  faithfully,  plainly, 
calmly,  and  decidedly." 

The  women  of  my  generation  must  see 
at  the  outset  that  a  new  course  is  to  be 
adopted  towards  them.  They  are  no 
longer  to  be  spoiled  children.  They  are 
to  come  under  a  discipline  gentle  but 
firm,  and  be  brought  up  in  the  way  they 
should  go. 


10  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

But  if  Dr.  Todd  had  searched  through 
the  world,  he  could  hardly  have  found  an 
historical  illustration  better  adapted  to 
his  essay  than  the  one  he  has  chosen.  It 
strikes  the  key-note  of  his  thought.  The 
women  of  Eome  were  so  wretched  that 
they  rushed  to  death  for  relief  The 
Senate  thereupon  passed  a  decree^  not 
to  abate  the  wretchedness,  but  to  pre- 
vent its  expression;  not  to  make  life 
more  attractive,  but  death  more  repul- 
sive. After  eighteen  hundred  years  of 
Christianity,  Dr.  Todd  can  think  of  no 
more  excellent  way. 

"  Discouraged  and  down-hearted "  is 
perhaps  one  of  those  felicities  of  expres- 
sion which  we  are  called  on  to  admire. 
Kepetition  and  contradiction  of  word  and 
sentiment  will  be  found  to  be  Dr.  Todd's 
especial  felicity.  So  far  as  happiness 
consists  in  setting  adjectives  and  pro- 
nouns adrift  without  any  visible  means 


WOMAN'S   WEONGS.  11 

of  support,  the  following  sentence  must 
be  conceded  to  be  eminently  blissful : 
"Among  the  other  sex  there  is  a  wide- 
spread uneasiness,  —  a  discontentment 
with  woman's  lot,  impatient  of  its  bur- 
dens, rebellious  against  its  sufferings,  an 
undefined  hope  of  emancipation  from 
the  ordinary  lot  of  humanity,  by  some 
great  revolution,  so  that  her  condition 
will  be  entirely  changed  !  " 

"This  feeling" — we  quote  now  rather 
for  the  felicity  of  the  thought  than  of 
the  expression  —  "crops  out  in  publicly 
ridiculing  marriage,  dwelling  on  its  evils, 
raving  about  the  tyranny  of  men,  crying 
for  the  '  emancipation  of  women/  " 

Dr.  Todd  can  never  be  suspected  of 
using,  language  to  conceal  ideas.  Does 
he  mean  to  say  that  this  wide-spread  un- 
easiness has  no  just  foundation?  Does 
he  mean  that  this  discontentment  is  dis- 
contentment   with    that    which    should 


12  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

cause  only  contentment ;  that  this  impa- 
tience, or,  to  quote  him  more  accuratel^^, 
this  "  impatient "  is  an  "  impatient "  of 
burdens  Divinely  appointed,  the  "  rebel- 
lious "  a  "  rebellious  "  against  sufferings 
Divinely  ordained?  He  speaks  of  a 
"  hope  of  emancipation  from  the  ordinary 
lot  of  humanity  "  ;  what  does  he  mean 
by  "  the  ordinary  lot  of  humanity  "  ? 
Work  and  disease  and  death  are  the  or- 
dinary lot  of  humanity.  Do  women,  in 
their  worst  conventions,  demand  from 
men  emancipation  from  work,  from  dis- 
ease and  death,  iii  their  season  ?  In  the 
very  next  paragraph  he  says :  "  The  de- 
mand is  ...  .  that  ....  women  ....  shall 
be  educated  as  he  [man]  is,  enter  the 
same  pursuits  that  he  does,  receive  the 
same  wages,  occupy  the  same  posts  and 
professions,  wield  the  same  influence,  and, 
in  a  word,  be  independent  of  man."  Does 
that  look  like  claiming  exemption  from 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  13 

the  ordinary  lot  of  humanity  ?  Is  it  not 
rather  a  claim  to  share  the  ordinary  lot 
of  humanity  ? 

In  what  Woman's  Eights  convention, 
from  the  pen  of  what  Woman's  Rights 
advocate,  has  Dr.  Todd  found  any  public 
ridicule  of  marriage,  or  any  other  dwell- 
ing on  its  evils  than  such  as  was  intended 
to  remove  them  ? 

Dr.  Todd  says  :  "  The  demand  is,  that 
....  she  shall  be  allowed  hereafter  to  be 
in  all  respects  equal  to  man."  Directly 
after  he  adds:  "Nobody  pretends  that 
the  sexes  are  equal  in  weight,  in  height, 
or  in  bodily  strength."  Does  he  mean 
that  women  demand  the  concession  of 
an  equality  which  they  admit  does  not 
and  cannot  exist?  His  words  say  it. 
But  it  is  not  the  "  strong-minded  women, 
who  clamor  and  disgust  their  sex  and 
ours  in  demanding  '  women's  rights,' " 
whom   he  addresses.     He  is  wise  in  so 


14  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

doing.      Women   who    had    taken    any 

thought  for  these  things  would  speedily 

increase    and    intensify  his    disgust.     It 

is  to  "  those  who  shrink  from  these  moral 

Camillas  "  that  he  sagaciously  turns  :     "  It 

is   to  this  class  of  the  sisterhood  I  am 

wishing  to  address  myself  at  this  time. 

Will  you  allow  me,  then,  to    come    and 

sit  down  by  your  side,  making  no  claim 

to    superiority  ?  "  —  dear,   condescending 
man ! 

"  AVill  you,  win  you,  •will  you,  will  you  walk  in,  Mr.  Fly." 

So  far  it  is  preface  and  introduction. 
Having  comfortably  established  himself 
by  the  side  of  his  "  fair  ones,"  he  proceeds 
to  treat  of  the  equality  of  the  sexes,  on 
which  he  rashly  promises  to  waste  no 
words.  This  promise  is  fulfilled  by  mak- 
ing all  the  conventional  concessions  of 
woman's  intuition,  her  delicacy  of  taste, 
the  girl's  quickness  of  mind  up  to  a  cer- 
tain period  as  compared  with  the  boy's. 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  15 

^'  We,  sons  of  dust,  move  slower,  we  creep, 
where  you  bound  to  the  head  of  the  stairs 
at  a  single  leap."  We  must  not  pause  to 
admire  the  grammatical  felicity  of  "  move 
slower,"  nor  the  rhetorical  felicity  of 
picturing  women  as  mounting  stairs  per 
saltum,  but  go  on  to  the  finer  felicities  of 
thought.  "^Why  then,'  my  lady  reader 
will  say, '  why  can't  we  be  independent 
of  man  ?  '  for  this  is  the  gist  of  the  w^hole 
subject.  I  reply,  you  can't  for  two 
reasons  :  first,  God  never  designed  you 
should ;  and  secondly,  your  own  deep  in- 
stincts are  in  the  way."  From  the  man- 
ner in  which  the  Divine  designs  and 
opinions  are  quoted  by  Dr.  Todd,  we 
should  infer  that  the  Almighty  had  tak- 
en that  gentleman  into  his  confidence. 
Certainly  he  speaks  with  a  definiteness 
which  ought  to  presuppose  a  new  reve- 
lation of  St.  John  the  Divine.  From  the 
mere  terrestrial  point  of  view,  we  should 


16  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

say  that  his  classification  lies  open  to  the 
charge  of  cross-division.  Divine  designs 
being  indicated  by  human  instincts,  his 
first  reason  involves  his  second;  but  of 
course  one  who  has  the  entree  of  heaven 
is  not  dependent  upon  earthly  facts  for 
his  knowledge.  Familiarity,  in  his  case, 
seems  as  usual  to  have  bred  contempt. 
He  regards  the  Divine  instrumentalities 
—  these  womanly  instincts  and  limita- 
tions —  quite  insufficient  to  secure  the 
desired  end,  and  evidently  believes  that 
the  Almighty  could  never  accomplish  his 
object  with  women  unless  the  Kev.  John 
Todd  ofiered  himself  as  a  medium  of  com- 
munication. Accordingly,  "  bear  with 
me,  and  keep  good-natured,  while  I  show 
you  what  you,  dear  ladies,  cannot  do, 
and  God  don't  ask  you  to  do. 

"  1.  You  cannot  invent.  There  are  all 
manner  of  inventions  in  our  age,  — 
steam,  railroads,  telegraphing,  machinery 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  IT 

of  all  kinds,  often  five  hundred  and  fifty 
weekly  applications  for  patents  at  the 
Patent  Ofi&ce,  but  among  them  all  no 
female  applicants.'*  Here,  felicities  both 
of  thought  and  expression  crowd  upon 
one  another  so  rapidly  that  the  "  female 
mind "  pauses  bewildered.  The  inven- 
tion of  steam  is  a  feat  paralleled  only 
by  that  of  the  young  soldier  who,  when 
asked  if  Newburyport  was  his  native 
place,  said  no,  but  on  his  return  from  the 
war  he  meant  to  make  it  so  !  Discrimi- 
nating age,  that  invents  applications,  but 
not  applicants ;  railroads  and  telegraph- 
ing, —  a  less  felicitous  writer  might  have 
said  telegraphs,  —  but  among  them  all  no 
women  1 

"  You  have  sewing-machines  almost 
numberless,  knitting-machines,  washing, 
ironing,  and  churning  machines ;  but  I 
never  heard  of  one  that  was  the  emana- 
tion of  the  female  mind.     Did  you  ?  .  .  .  . 


18  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

I  suppose  this  power  was  denied  you,  lest 
it  should  take  you  out  of  your  most  im- 
portant sphere,  as  I  shall  show." 

"  I  suppose."  So,  then,  Dr.  Todd's  rev- 
elation was  fragmentary  as  well  as  that 
of  St.  Paul,  who  also  was  obliged  to  in- 
terpolate, "  to  the  rest  speak  I,  not  the 
Lord." 

It  might  be  said,  if  the  question  were 
of  invention,  that  possibly  one  reason 
why  women  have  never  been  invent- 
ors is,  that  they  have  never  been  arti- 
sans ;  but  the  matter  is  utterly  irrele- 
vant. Granted  that  women  cannot  in- 
vent ;  granted  that  the  sparrow  killed 
cock-robin ;  —  what  of  it  ?  What  connec- 
tion is  there  between  power  of  invention 
and  woman's  rights  ?  Woman's  rights 
means,  perhaps  chiefly,  the  right  of  suf- 
frage. Does  Dr.  Todd  maintain  that  in- 
ventive power  is  necessary  to  the  posses- 
sion or  the  exercise  of  that  right  ?     Does 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  19 

he  mean  to  say  that  no  man  shall  vote 
for  town-officers  till  he  has  invented  a 
sewing-machine  ?  Of  all  the  inventions 
of  our  age,  —  steam  and  telegraphing  and 
female  non-applicants,  —  I  never  heard 
of  one  that  was  the  emanation  of  Dr. 
Todd's  mind.  Did  you?  Shall  Dr.  Todd 
therefore  be  disfranchised  ? 

But,  says  Dr.  Todd,  with  equal  perti- 
nence :  "  You  cannot  compete  with  men  in 
a  long  course  of  mental  labor.  Your  del- 
icate organization  never  has  and  never 
can  bear"  (another  happy  grammatical 
touch)  "  the  study  by  which  you  can  be- 
come Newtons,"  and  so  forth.  No  wo- 
man has  ever  stood  by  the  side  of  Phid- 
ias or  Homer,  and  the  girl's  best  train- 
ing gives  her  less  skill  on  the  piano  than 
her  brother  attains  with  no  training  at 
all. 

Again,  what  of  it  ?  When  Dr.  Todd 
says  so  neatly,  "And  even  in  cooking  and 


20  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

in  millinery,  as  is  well  known,  men  must 
and  do  stand  at  the  head  of  these  occu- 
pations," we  may  infer  from  their  supe- 
rior fitness  that  millinery  and  cooking 
ought  to  be  given  up  to  men,  —  a  prop- 
osition in  which  I  should  heartily  con- 
cur ;  when  he  asks,  "  Did  you  ever  know 
a  woman  who  could  endure  being  a 
teacher  till  seventy-five,  as  men  often 
do  ?  "  we  may  say  under  the  rose,  "  and 
might  in  some  cases  till  seventy -five 
thousand,  for  all  the  fatigue  their  teach- 
ing need  cause  them " ;  but  how  does 
it  all  stand  connected  with  '^  women's 
rights  "  ?  Do  New  tons  and  Kaphaels 
alone  choose  rulers  and  discern  prin- 
ciples and  pass  judgment  upon  laws  ? 
How  many  Miltons  and  Canovas  does 
Dr.  Todd  reckon  in  his  congregation,  and 
how  cheerfully  do  the  other  members 
yield  to  them  a  political  monopoly  ?  If 
Dr.  Todd  should  ever  come  to  the  conclu- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  21 

sion  that  he  cannot  equal  Shakespeare, 
will  he  at  once  propose  to  give  up  one 
third  of  his  salary  and  his  whole  right 
of  franchise  ? 

"  Delicate  organization  "  is  the  alleged 
cause  of  this  mental  inability  in  woman, 
—  "because  her  bodily  organization  can- 
not endure  the  pressure  of  continued 
and  long  labor  as  we  can."  She  has  "  a 
peculiar  organization,  requiring  the  most 
careful  and  gentle  treatment."  How 
wide-spread  is  the  evil  which  Dr.  Todd 
deprecates  ?  How  many  women  in  Amer- 
ica are  suffering  from  a  mad  endeavor 
to  become  Newtons  and  Kaphaels,  com- 
pared with  the  number  who  are  strain- 
ing every  nerve,  who  are  laboring  to  ex- 
haustion, disease,  and  death,  in  the  effort 
to  earn  their  bread,  to  support  helpless 
relatives,  or,  where  there  is  not  poverty, 
to  do  the  every-day  work  of  exacting 
households  ?     How  many  female  brains 


22  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

are  exhausting  themselves  with  a  long 
course  of  severe  mental  labor,  com- 
pared with  the  number  that  are  destroy- 
ing themselves  by  inaction  ?  Dr.  Todd 
is  eager  to  snatch  women  from  the  gulf 
into  which  their  strenuous  intellectual 
work  threatens  to  plunge  them.  He  is 
painfully  alive  to  the  dangers  that  men- 
ace from  Newton's  Principia  and  Para- 
dise Lost.  He  prescribes  the  most  care- 
ful and  gentle  treatment  to  save  women 
from  the  fatal  effect  of  music  and  meta- 
physics ;  but  of  any  hurtful  demand  upon 
female  strength  from  other  sources,  he 
seems  to  be  entirely  unaware.  He  rec- 
ognizes no  peculiarity  or  delicacy  in  the 
female  organization,  which  incapacitates 
a  woman  for  sewing  all  day,  or  standing 
behind  a  counter  all  day,  or  spending  all 
day  for  weeks  and  years  in  doing,  not 
household  work  merely,  but  household 
drudgery,  with  no  holiday  or  holi-hour, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  23 

but  such  as  neutralizes  itself  by  bringing 
increased  toil  in  its  train.  Yet  it  seems 
impossible  he  should  not  know  that,  for 
one  woman  diseased  by  excessive  brain- 
work,  there  are  one  hundred  diseased  by 
excessive  nerve  and  muscle  work  or  men- 
tal idleness.  He  has  "  no  difficulty  in 
admitting  that  the  mind  of  woman  is 
equal  to  ours,  nay,  if  you  please,  supe- 
rior." (This  must  be  only  one  of  Dr. 
Todd's  "nice  and  pretty  things."  He 
cannot  for  a  moment  seriously  harbor 
the  suggestion  that  any  female  mind  can 
really  equal  —  ours  !)  It  is  her  physical 
organization  that  stands  in  the  way.  His  , 
position  then  virtually  is :  The  female 
mind  is  strong  ;  the  female  body  is 
weak :  therefore  the  female  mind  must 
be  spared,  but  the  female  body  may  be 
worked  indefinitely.     Q.  E.  D. 

Dr.  Todd  says,  with  charming  and  ele- 
gant playfulness,  "  He  is  a  poor  dog  that 


24  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

barks  up  the  wrong  tree,  however  loud 
or  earnest  he  may  bark,"  —  a  principle 
which,  if  true,  it  is  suicidal  for  him  to 
enunciate. 

"If  what  I  have  said,"  continues  the 
unterrified  Doctor,  "seems  to  want  gal- 
lantry, I  reply,  it  is  not  gallantry  that  I 
am  now  after,  but  facts,  —  truth,  —  the 
true  sphere  and  power  and  glory  of  wo- 
man." Not  at  all.  One  may  ransack  his 
whole  essay  in  vain  for  a  single  indica- 
tion that  he  is  in  search  of  truth,  or 
facts,  or  woman's  sphere.  Everything 
goes  to  show  that  he  considers  himself 
already  in  possession  of  the  truth ;  he  is 
quite  settled  in  his  own  mind  as  to  what 
is  really  woman's  sphere,  and  he  is  con- 
cerned only  to  bring  women  over  to  his 
way  of  thinking. 

"  Be  patient.  I  have  some  nice  and 
pretty  things  to  say,  some  garlands  to 
weave,  after  I  have  led  you  to  see  the 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  25 

great  facts  of  your  being."  Not  after  I 
have  discovered  them,  but  after  I  have 
led  you  to  see  them.  Take  heart,  dear 
ladies.  You  are  not  to  be  given  over 
to  uncovenanted  mercies.  Dr.  Todd  will 
take  you  tenderly  by  the  hand,  he  will 
guide  your  wayward  little  feet  to  the 
abyss  of  your  incapacity.  But  having 
given  you  a  glimpse  into  its  depths, 
and  convinced  you  that,  unlike  your  fa- 
thers and  husbands,  you  cannot  invent 
steam  or  write  Odysseys,  he  will  kindly 
pluck  you  a  posy  to  still  your  sobs,  and 
then  let  you  go  home. 

"  The  design  of  God,"  says  the  great 
expounder,  taking  a  fresh  start  from  the 
skies,  —  "  the  design  of  God  in  creating 
woman  was  to  complete  man."  "  What 
is  the  chief  end  of  man  ?  "  asks  the  West- 
minster Catechism.  "  Man's  chief  end  is 
to  glorify  God  and  enjoy  him  forever." 
"What  is  the   chief    end   of   woman?" 


26  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

"  Woman's  chief  end  is  to  complete  man." 
True,  just  as  much  as  God's  design  in 
creating  man  was  to  make  a  clay  model 
for  woman.  "  She  has  a  mission,  .... 
to  be  the  mother  and  the  former  of  all 
the  character  of  the  human  race.  For 
the  first  most  important  earthly  period 
of  life  the  race  is  committed  to  her, — 
for  about  twelve  years  almost  entirely. 
The  human  family  is  what  she  makes 
them."  Assertion  may  be  met  by  as- 
sertion. The  human  race  is  committed 
to  the  father  just  as  much  as  to  the 
mother.  The  strongest  force  stamps 
character,  whether  it  be  that  of  father 
or  mother.  Often  the  good  teachings 
of  the  mother  are  nullified  by  the  bad 
example  of  the  father.  The  child's  mind 
and  heart  are  the  offspring  of  his  father 
as  well  as  of  his  mother.  A  mother  can- 
not make  the  family  happy  or  prosperous 
without  the  help,  or  in  spite  of  the  hin- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  27 

drance,  of  tlie  fatherj  any  more  than  the 
father  can  without  her  or  in  spite  of  her. 
There  is  no  such  dividing  line  between 
father  and  mother.  Their  duty  is  inex- 
tricably interwoven.  "  She  is  the  queen 
of  the  home,  its  centre,  its  light  and  glo- 
ry." (Eecent  intelligence.)  "  Our  mothers 
train  us,  and  we  owe  everything  to  them. 
Our  wives  perfect  all  that  is  good  in  us, 
and  no  man  is  ashamed  to  say  he  is  in- 
debted to  his  wife  for  his  happiness,  his 
influence,  and  his  character."  Dr.  Todd 
must  be  wary,  or  his  felicity  of  style  will 
get  him  into  trouble.  A  double  mortgage 
to  the  full  extent  on  the  same  property 
renders  a  man  liable  to  the  law.  If  he 
owes  everything  to  his  mother,  and  yet 
is  indebted  to  his  wife  for  his  happiness, 
his  influence,  and  his  character,  we  can 
only  suggest  to  him  the  old  Farmers' 
Almanac  couplet, — 

"  Owen  Moore  has  run  away, 
Owing  more  than  he  can  pay." 


28  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

"  The  home,  the  home,  is  the  fountain  of 
all  that  is  good  on  earth."  Are  churches 
and  Sunday  schools  and  theological  sem- 
inaries, then,  fountains  of  unmixed  evil  ? 
"Mother,  wife,  daughter,  sister,  are  the 
tenderest,  most  endearing  words  in  lan- 
guage. Woman  is  the  highest,  holiest, 
most  precious  gift  to  man."  Does  Dr. 
Todd  intend  this  for  argument?  Does 
he  mean  that  all  homes  are  actually  foun- 
tains of  good ;  that  all  men  pursue  to- 
wards their  mothers,  wives,  daughters, 
sisters,  the  tenderest  and  most  endearing 
course  of  action;  that  all  men  recognize 
and  treat  the  women  with  whom  they 
come  in  contact  as  their  highest,  holiest, 
most  precious  gift,  or  that  they  come  so 
near  it  as  to  make  any  change  undesira- 
ble ?  If  not,  what  does  he  mean  ?  Why 
is  he  just  now  barking  up  that  particular 
tree  ? 

"If  woman  steps   out  of  her  sphere 


WOMAN'S  WEONGS.  29 

and  demands  to  be  and  to  do  what  men 
do,"  —  especially  if  she  demands  to  be 
what  men  do,  she  is  certainly  an  ex- 
traordinary woman,  —  "  she  will  not  be 
allowed  to  be  a  man,  and  be  treated  with 
the  tenderness  due  to  women."  But  if 
she  stays  a  woman,  will  she  be  sure  of 
that  tenderness  ?  "  If  she  goes  to  Con- 
gress, she  must  also  go  to  the  heavy 
drudgery  of  earth,"  from  which,  as  every 
one  knows,  she  is  now  entirely  exempt. 
Just  here,  in  fact,  Dr.  Todd  surpasses 
himself,  and  becomes  continuously  de- 
lightful. Whoever  feels  obliged  to  use  his 
reason  finds  himself  constantly  hampered 
by  its  requirements,  and  can  reach  cor- 
rect conclusions  only  by  a  slow,  zigzag, 
and  often  perplexing  path ;  but  Dr.  Todd 
is  free  from  vexing  limitations.  His 
mind  seems  to  be  of  that  privileged  sort 
that  has  no  relation  to  facts.  He  as- 
sumes the  point  in  question,  he  proves 


30  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

what  was  not  denied,  he  disproves  what 
was  not  asserted,  he  contradicts  his  own 
statements  with  a  bhthe  unconsciousness 
truly  refreshing.  Indeed,  his  expertness 
in  the  latter  feat  is  so  great,  that  he  may 
be  said  to  have  introduced  a  new  form 
of  proposition,  the  Kilkenny  categorical ; 
propositions  which  you  have  only  to  set 
side  by  side,  and  they  immediately  eat 
each  other  up.  He  labors  under  a 
chronic  conviction  that  what  women  want 
is  to  be  men.  When  they  express  a 
desire  to  be  like  men  in  respect  to  get- 
ting fair  wages  for  work,  he  finds  it  a 
desire  to  wear  —  I  borrow  his  own  elo- 
quence —  pants.  That  is  as  near  as  he 
can  get  to  the  trouble  of  the  time.  He 
prepares  an  elaborate  and  formidable 
list  of  occupations,  —  trying  up  whales, 
cutting  out  tumors,  stirring  tan  vats, 
bleeding  calves,  sticking  swine,  and  many 
others  equally  aesthetic,  —  and  felicitously 


WOMAN'S  WEONGS.  81 

addS;  ^^  Now  she  must  go  in  for  all  this, 
if  she  leaves  her  sphere  and  tries  to  be  a 
man."  "  Take  off  the  robes,  and  put  on 
pants,  and  show  the  limbs,  and  grace  and 
mystery  is"  (a  minor  grammatical  feli- 
city) "all  gone.  And  yet,  to  be  like  a 
man,  you  must  doff  your  own  dress  and 
put  on  ours."  "Dear  sisters,  you  can't 
be  good  wives,  mothers,  and  crowns  of 
your  families,  and  go  into  these  things, 
—  can  you  ?  " 

"Why  not  ?  Wives  and  mothers  in  their 
recognized  "  sphere"  are  called  on  to  per- 
form many  services  no  more  agreeable 
to  woman's  "  refined,"  and  far  more  ex- 
haustive to  her  "  delicate  organization," 
than  blacking  boots.  But  why  must 
the  dear  sisters  go  into  all  these  things  ? 
Suppose  they  do  want  to  be  men,  and 
suppose  they  succeed  in  becoming  men, 
how  does  it  follow  that  they  are  to  be 
forced  to  "  hang  on  the  yard-arms  "  ?    Are 


32  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

men  forced  to  hang  on  yard-arms  ?  Does 
Dr.  Todd  earn  his  Hving  by  "burning 
over  a  smelting-furnace "  ?  Has  not  a 
man,  in  spite  of  his  right  of  suffrage,  we 
will  not  say  in  consequence  of  it,  power 
to  say  whether  he  will  or  will  not  spend 
his  days  as  a  barber?  Do  not  men  be- 
come doctors,  lawyers,  architects,  artisans, 
laborers,  as  they  will,  guided  by  taste, 
fitness,  or  ambition?  When  women  be- 
come men,  why  must  they  pass  under  a 
different  law  ?  Why  must  Lucretia  Mott 
go  to  the  Arctic  Ocean  and  hunt  seals, 
while  Dr.  Todd  may  stay  at  home  and 
write  sermons  ?  Through  stress  of  need, 
men  sometimes  pursue  uncongenial  occu- 
pations, but  women  do  it  already.  By 
becoming  men  they  would  lose  noth- 
ing in  that  direction.  I  know  of  no 
employment  which  men  are  absolutely 
forced  to  adopt,  except  thai  of  war.  If 
women  vote,  they  must  also  ''wear  jack- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  33 

boots  and  spurs."  But  is  the  wearing 
of  jack-boots  and  spurs  the  only  duty  in 
war-time  ?  During  the  late  war  was 
there  not  an  army  of  women  at  home 
as  large  as  the  army  of  men  in  the 
field,  and  did  they  not  work  as  long 
and  as  efficiently  ?  And  if  war  is  so 
dear  to  the  human  heart  that  it  cannot 
be  relinquished,  may  not  the  regiments 
of  women  be  detailed  for  services  just 
as  important  as  those  of  men,  yet  just 
as  womanly  as  those  of  the  host  of  wo- 
men that  were  employed  in  our  civil 
war?  But  is  it  an  impossibility  that 
men  will  by  and  by  cease  to  let  their 
angry  passions  rise  to  the  point  of  tear- 
ing each  other's  eyes  ?  Would  it  be 
an  irreparable  calamity,  —  would  Dr. 
Todd,  as  a  minister  of  the  Gospel  of 
Christ,  consider  it  a  consummation  de- 
voutly to  be  deprecated, —  if  the  unfit- 
ness of  jack-boots  to  woman  should  re- 
ft 


34:  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

suit,  not  in  the  discomfiture  of  woman^ 
but  in  the  abolition  of  jack-boots  ? 

On  the  subject  of  voting,  Dr.  Todd 
comes  out  in  force.  ^^A  great  hue  and 
cry  is  set  up  about  the  right  of  women 
to  vote,  and  the  cruelty  of  denying 
them  this  gift.  Plainly  this  is  merely  a 
civil,  and  not  a  natural  right.  Minors, 
foreigners,  and  idiots  are  denied  it."  A 
mere  bagatelle.  What  are  the  women 
fretting  about  ?  They  are  no  worse  off 
than  idiots.  Can  any  reasonable  being 
be  discontented  who  is  allowed  to  exer- 
cise all  the  rights  of  infants  in  arms? 
"It  would  seem  best  ....  for  those 
who,  at  any  hazard  or  labor,  earn  the 
property,  to  select  the  rulers."  But  there 
are  thousands  of  women  who  earn  prop- 
erty; therefore  they  shall  not  select  rul- 
ers, according  to  Dr.  Todd's  logic.  Man 
"  wants  rulers  in  reference  to  the  indus- 
try and  business  of  his   age.    Let  him. 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  35 

select  them."  Woman  also  wants  rulers 
in  reference  to  the  business  and  industry 
of  her  age.  Let  her  not  select  them. 
Dr.  Todd  says :  "  The  wealth  of  the  age 
is  expended  by  woman,  —  earned  by  the 
man,  —  for  the  most  part."  As  I  write, 
I  see  load  after  load  of  salt  hay  going  by 
from  the  marshes.  The  men  who  made 
that  hay  rose  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, rode  two,  three,  or  four  miles  to  the 
marsh,  and  worked  till  night  in  cutting 
and  curing  it.  But  the  women  who 
stayed  at  home  rose  at  the  same  hour, 
prepared  the  men's  breakfast,  packed 
their  dinner  and  lunch,  and,  in  cooking, ' 
cleaning,  making,  and  mending,  worked 
just  as  long  and  just  as  hard  as  the  men. 
The  money  for  that  hay  will  not  be  paid 
into  their  hands,  but  they  earned  it  just  as 
much  as  the  men.  Dr.  Todd  avows  that 
men  are  indebted  to  their  wives  for  their 
influence  and  character.    But  it  is  influ- 


36  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

ence  and  character  that  determine  income. 
"  Being  a  widow  or  fatherless,  is  a  misfor- 
tune." (Not  always.)  "  But  the  husband 
or  father  earned  the  property,  and  voted 
as  long  as  he  lived.  It  may  be  a  misfor- 
tune that  the  property  does  not  now 
vote,  but  not  so  great  a  misfortune  to 
the  world  as  to  have  the  sex  go  out 
of  their  sphere  and  enter  into  political 
life."  The  disputed  point  is,  whether 
voting  is  woman's  sphere.  You  shall 
not  vote,  says  Dr.  Todd,  because  it  is 
going  out  of  your  sphere !  And  this 
is  the  good,  strong  common-sense  which 
is  to  commend  itself  to  the  great  major- 
ity of  American  women! 

"Moreover,  there  is  something  so  un- 
seemly in  having  women  wading  in  the 
dirty  waters  of  pohtics,  draggling  and 
wrangling  round  the  ballot-boxes,  e.  g. 
mingling  with  the  mobs  and  rowdies  in 
New  York  City,  tliat  I  wonder  she  ever 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  37 

thinks  of  it."  Doubtless  she  never  would 
have  thought  of  it,  had  she  dreamed  that 
it  would  excite  Dr.  Todd's  wonder ;  but 
as  the  deed  is  already  done,  perhaps  the 
next  best  thing  is  to  inquire  who  made 
the  political  waters  dirty.  Who  is  it 
that  is  draggling  and  wrangling  around 
the  ballot-boxes  ?  Must  we  say  men  ? 
But  woman  is  man's  highest,  holiest, 
most  precious  gift.  It  is  to  these  drag- 
ghng,  wrangling  mobs  and  rowdies  that 
this  holy  gift  is  intrusted.  A  man  who 
has  kept  his  gift  sacred  at  home  for 
three  hundred  and  sixty-four  days  of 
the  year  will  not  be  likely  to  desecrate 
it  at  the  polls  on  the  three  hundred 
and  sixty-fifth.  And  if  men  are  so  bad 
that  they  cannot  be  trusted  to  vote 
with  women,  is  it  beyond  question  that 
they  ought  to  be  trusted  to  vote  for 
women  ? 

Again,  suppose  the  ballot  to  be  ex- 


88  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

tended  to  American  women,  how  many 
of  them  will  mingle  with  the  mobs  and 
rowdies  of  New  York  City  ?  How  many 
of  the  women  in  Dr.  Todd's  congregation 
will  take  the  first  train  for  New  York  on 
election  day  ?  And  even  in  New  York, 
who  are  the  women  that  will  draggle  and 
wrangle  around  the  ballot-boxes  ?  Is  it 
the  women  of  Grace  Church  and  Trinity, 
of  Dr.  Thompson's  and  Dr.  Chapin's 
and  Dr.  Adams's  churches?  Do  Dr. 
Thompson,  Dr.  Chapin,  and  Dr.  Todd 
draggle  and  wrangle  around  the  ballot- 
boxes?  and  are  their  wives  any  more 
likely  to  do  it  than  themselves?  We 
will  not  of  course  hazard  the  conjecture 
that  the  female  mind  might  invent  a  sep- 
arate arrangement  for  taking  the  female 
vote;  but  draggling  and  wrangling  do 
not  seem  to  be  the  necessary  concomi- 
tants of  voting  among  men.  And  if  a 
man  feels  that  his  wife's  character  is  not 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  39 

strong  enough  to  enable  her  to  deposit  a 
ballot  once  a  year  without  demoralizing 
herself  and  disgracing  him,  he  can  fall 
back  to  the  old  English  common  law, 
and  shut  her  up  at  home  till  election 
is  over.  So  any  woman  who  feels  with- 
in herself  that  her  womanliness  would 
be  injured  by  going  to  the  polls,  that 
her  dignity  cannot  stand  so  trying  a 
process,  has  always  the  simple  remedy 
of  staying  away.  Let  no  woman  be  led 
into  temptation.  But  to  keep  all  the 
dear  sisters  from  the  polls  because  a  few 
of  them  are  too  weak  to  be  trusted 
there,  is  purchasing  peace  at  a  great 
cost.  That  the  advocates  of  voting  are 
"  moral  Camillas,  who  clamor  and  disgust 
their  sex  and  ours,"  is  nothing  to  the 
purpose,  unless  unattractive  manners  are 
recognized  as  a  disqualification  for  the 
exercise  of  the  right  of  suffrage.  Unless 
it  is  demanded  that  a  man  shall  be  agree- 


40.  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

able  before  he  is  allowed  to  vote,  there  is 
no  justice  in  demanding  that  a  woman 
shall  be  agreeable. 

The  complicated  question  of  wages  has 
no  complications  for  Dr.  Todd.  Minds 
of  the  best  endowments  and  the  highest 
culture  have  given  their  energies  to  this 
subject,  yet  have  failed  to  lead  the  world 
to  a  satisfactory  conclusion.  Dr.  Todd 
takes  hold  of  it,  and  difficulties  disappear 
like  flax  in  the  fire.  He  confesses  that 
it  is  a  hard  problem  to  solve,  and  imme- 
diately goes  and  solves  it.  How,  will  any 
one  guess?  By  saying,  first,  we  can't 
have  justice  in  these  matters;  and  sec- 
ondly, we  already  have  it!  "We  can't 
have  justice  in  these  matters.  But  bear 
in  mind,  that  God  has  put  the  labor  and 
the  duty  on  men  to  support  the  families ; 
....  and  to  do  it,  and  bear  the  respon- 
sibility, he  must  receive  wages  accord- 
ingly.    Is  it,  then,  so  very  unjust  that 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  41 

woman,  who  has  no  sucli  responsibility, 
does  not  receive  so  high  wages  ?  " 

Here,  straightening  out  the  tangle  of 
talk,  we  find  three  distinct  lines  of  re- 
sponse to  the  complaint  of  low  wages :  — 

First,  We  can't  have  justice  in  these 
matters,  illustrated  by  the  case  of  an  ex- 
cellent pastor  who  receives  only  four 
hundred  dollars  salary,  and  of  many  who 
receive  five  or  six  hundred  dollars. 

Second,  We  have  justice,  for  men  have 
the  responsibility,  and  therefore  they 
ought  to  have  the  wages. 

Third,  The  great  laws  of  political  econ- 
omy, especially  the  law  of  supply  and 
demand,  are  beyond  reach  of  human  law 
and  power,  therefore  all  talk  is  useless. 

To  the  first  we  may  say  that  the  im- 
possibility of  securing  justice  does  not 
stop  the  mouths  of  the  excellent  pastors 
any  more  than  those  of  women.  Every 
reader    of   religious    newspapers    knows 


42  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

that  tlie  cry  of  the  clergy  for  larger  sala- 
ries is  an  exceeding  great  and  bitter  cry. 
But  I  think  there  is  no  record  of  any 
attempt  by  Dr.  Todd  to  hush  them  by 
telling  them  that  they  can't  have  justice, 
—  that  their  demand  is  vain  so  long  as 
there  are  thousands  ready  to  underbid 
them,  and  do  the  work  cheaper,  —  that 
the  demand  will  pay  in  proportion  to  the 
supply,  and  no  human  power  can  alter 
this.  Yet  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  the 
suggestions  which  are  thought  so  salu- 
tary and  sufficient  in  the  one  case  are 
not  equally  so  in  the  other. 

For  the  second.  Does  responsibility 
indeed  enter  into  the  calculation  of 
wages  ?  Does  a  mechanic  with  six  chil- 
dren receive  more  money  for  his  work 
than  a  mechanic  with  no  children  ?  Then 
it  would  seem  that  Dr.  Todd's  third 
proposition  cannot  be  true,  at  least  not 
in  the  common  acceptation  of  its  terms. 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  43 

Demand  pays  in  proportion  to  the  supply 
of  responsibility,  not  solely  to  the  supply 
of  work.  But  why  then  is  not  woman's 
responsibility  also  taken  into  the  account. 
Why  do  not  school  committees  pay  to 
female  teachers  who  have  families  to 
support  the  same  salary  which  they  pay 
to  male  teachers  similarly  situated  ?  Dr. 
Todd  indeed  denies  that  there  is  any 
female  responsibility.  The  woman  on 
whom  his  eye  is  chronically  set  "  has  no 
such  responsibility."  The  world,  as  Dr. 
Todd  sees  it,  is  evidently  modelled  on  the 
heaven  which  one  of  our  exquisite  little 
Sunday-school  songs  so  poetically  por- 
trays :  — 

"  No  wickedness  there,  not  a  shade  of  transgression, 
Nor  poverty  there,  —  no,  the  saints  are  all  wealthy,  — 
Nor  sickness  can  reach  them,  —  that  country  is  healthy." 

In  his  apocalyptic  vision  he  sees 
women  as  queens,  walking  gracefully 
in  waving  robes,  hearing  only  the  most 


44  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

endearing  words,  receiving  only  such 
careful  and  gentle  treatment  as  their  re- 
fined organization  requires,  yet  fired  with 
an  unaccountable  desire  to  leave  it  all 
and  rush  to  the  slaughter-house  to  knock 
down  oxen  on  their  own  account,  and 
receive  as  much  money  for  it,  to  spend 
on  rings,  as  men  receive  to  buy  bread 
and  butter  for  the  whole  family.  He 
does  not  recognize  —  he  at  least  makes 
no  provision  for  —  the  thousands  of  wo- 
men who  have  their  own  bread  to  earn, 
and  often  that  of  relatives.  "  The  wolf  is 
at  the  door,"  cry  these  women.  "  We  are 
starving  in  the  house.  Untie  our  hands 
that  we  may  have  a  fairer  chance  at  the 
foe  ! "  "  The  house,  the  house,"  cries  Dr, 
Todd,  "is  the  place  for  women.  Wolf- 
fighting  belongs  to  men.  Woman's  deli- 
cate organization  cannot  endure  so  long 
as  his,"  —  and  goes  back  into  his  study. 
For  the   third   proposition.     If  it  be 


WOMAN'S  WEONGS.  45 

true,  why  does  lie  make  the  first  and 
second  ?  Because  he  is  gifted  with  a 
briUiant  inabihty  to  distinguish  between 
what  is  true  and  what  is  untrue,  what  is 
pertinent  and  what  is  impertinent.  To 
him  a  principle,  a  fact,  an  obligation,  an 
incident,  a  possibility,  all  belong  to  one 
class.  He  tosses  together  a  heap  of 
bricks  and  stones  and  mortar  and  rub- 
bish, with  a  granite  block  or  two,  and 
thinks  it  is  a  marble  monument.  And 
men  upturn  to  it  solemn,  admiring  eyes, 
and  commend  it  to  American  women ! 

But  Dr.  Todd  does  recognize  the  fact 
that  "there  are  over  seventy  thousand 
more  females"  (what  felicity  should  we 
have  missed  had  he  called  these  females 
women !)  "in  Massachusetts  than  there 
are  men,  and  probably  twice  this  number 

in  the  State  of  New  York Our  young 

men  go  off  early  in  life,  leaving  homes, 
mothers,   and   sisters    behind  them 


46  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

Now  the  question  comes,  what  shall  be 
done  in  behalf  of  these  thousands  of  vir- 
tuous, educated,  and  noble  girls  ?  "  At 
last,  then,  we  have  got  Dr.  Todd  face  to 
face,  not  with  a  phantom  of  his  own 
brain,  but  with  a  real  difficulty.  How 
does   he   meet   it? 

"  The  cry  is,  '  Make  them  into  clerks, 
book-keepers,  bankers,  and  give  them  all 
the  employments  of  men.'  ....  Let  us 
think  it  over  a  moment.  We  are  sorry 
for  this  state  of  things  and  wish  we 
could  remedy  it."  That  is  hopeful;  Dr. 
Todd  might  have  put  his  hands  into 
his  pockets,  and  said  he  was  glad  of 
it!  But  what  is  he  sorry  for? — that 
the  seventy  thousand  girls  are  born,  or 
that  the  seventy  thousand  young  men 
went  West?  Would  he  think  it  better 
for  themselves  and  society  that  they 
should  have  stayed  at  home  ?  "  But  sup- 
pose now  we  make  these  girls  into  clerks, 


WOMAN'S  WRQNGS.  47 

in  stores,  in  the  counting-room,  in  tlie 
insurance-office,  in  the  bank,  —  say  ten 
thousand  in  Massachusetts  and  twenty 
thousand  in  New  York,  —  don't  we  dis- 
place just  so  many  young  men,  drive 
them  off  to  the  West,  prevent  so  many 
new  families  from  being  established  here, 
take  away  thirty  thousand  chances  of 
marriage  from  these  females,  and  en- 
hance the  evil  we  are  trying  to  rem- 
edy ?  Is  it  a  blessing  to  woman  to 
lessen  her  opportunities  for  marriage  ? 
This  state  of  things  will  eventually  right 
itself,  but  it  bears  hard  upon  women  now ; 
but  to  displace  men,  to  increase  the  evil, 
to  plan  for  a  present  exigency  by  upturn- 
ing all  the  arrangements  of  Providence, 
is  not  wise.  We  must  look  at  the  grand 
total  of  result.  It  is  not  that  we  wish  to 
keep  women  from  enjoying  anything  and 
everything  that  is  for  the  best  good 
of  her  sex.     I  speak  of  displacing  men, 


48  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

and  forcing  them  away.  I  might  add, 
that,  from  the  very  instincts  of  the  hu- 
man heart,  every  pnbHc  employment 
diminishes  woman's  chance  of  marriage, 
and  in  proportion  to  its  publicity." 

So  then  it  seems  that,  if  women  leave 
their  sphere,  they  must  go  into  ore-dig- 
ging and  hod-carrying,  timber-cutting  and 
log-driving,  but  they  may  not  go  into 
banks  and  insurance-offices.  There  is  no 
objection  to  displacing  young  men  from 
yard-arms,  but  they  must  not  be  displaced 
from  the  counting-room.  The  law  of 
supply  and  demand  must  regulate  wages, 
but  it  cannot  be  trusted  to  regulate  work. 
Employers  may  justly  pay  women  star- 
vation prices,  but  women  must  not  seek 
any  other  than  the  starvation  places. 
No  moral  sense  need  keep  a  tailor  from 
oppressing  his  needle-women,  but  moral 
considerations  must  keep  needle-women 
from  taking  refuge  in  a  strawberry-gar- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  49 

den.  No  girl  must  enter  a  shop  or 
a  school-room,  —  Dr.  Todd  does  not 
say  school-room,  but  he  must  mean  it, 
since  a  school-room  is  a  more  public 
place  than  an  insurance-office,  and  a 
woman  there  displaces  a  man  just  as 
certainly,  —  no  girl  must  enter  a  shop 
or  a  school-room,  because  she  displaces 
a  man  and  diminishes  her  chance  of 
marriage.  Dr.  Todd  elsewhere  tells  us 
that  he  has  been  for  forty  years  connected 
with  female  seminaries.  Female  semi- 
naries are  chiefly  under  the  charge  of 
female  principals  and  teachers.  Has  he 
taken  care  to  inform  those  teachers  that 
they  are  upturning  the  arrangements  of 
Providence  ?  Has  he  exhorted  them  in 
season  and  out  of  season,  for  as  long  a 
time  as  the  Israelites  were  wandering  in 
the  wilderness,  to  leave  their  schools  and 
go  home,  that  they  might  be  ready  in 
case  a  suitor  should  happen  along  ? 


60  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

•  What  does  Dr.  Todd  propose  ?  He 
shuts  the  avenues  to  employment :  what 
does  he  open  instead  ? 

Nothing.  Absolutely  nothing.  • 
He  has  no  more  to  say  on  the  subject. 
He  takes  up  at  once  another  theme. 
The  seventy  thousand  women  may  sit 
on  the  curb-stone  and  suck  their  thumbs, 
for  anything  he  has  to  suggest.  It  bears 
rather  hard  on  woman  now,  he  admits, 
but  it  will  eventually  right  itself.  Suck- 
ing your  thumb  Lg  not  a  lucrative,  nor, 
after  a  certain  age,  an  honorable  or 
agreeable  occupation,  but  in  course  of 
seventy  or  a  thousand  years  something 
better  may  offer ;  which  is  consoling. 
Starving  is  not  pleasant  now;  but  to 
stave  off  starvation  by  going  into  a  dry- 
goods  shop  and  upturning  all  the  ar- 
rangements of  Providence  is  not  wise. 
A  pretty  Providence,  truly,  that  scatters 
through  the  State  seventy  thousand  more 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  51 

women  than  can  be  married^  and  then 
forbids  them  to  do  anything  else  than 
marry !  A  Providence  after  Dr.  Todd's 
own  heart,  that  tosses  together  a  mass 
of  incongruities  and  calls  it  an  arrange- 
ment !  —  an  arrangement  so  stable  and 
efficient  that  a  girl  can  upset  it  with  a 
yardstick ! 

And  this  is  what  our  religious  teach- 
ers call  felicity  of  thought,  and  our 
secular  teachers,  good,  strong  common- 
sense. 

Dr.  Todd  next  settles  the  question  of 
female  education  and  female  colleges. 
"  If  it  ministers  to  variety  to  call  a  girls' 
school  a  college,  it  is  very  harmless." 
He  is  willing  the  fair  ones  should  amuse 
themselves  with  edge-tools  to  that  ex- 
tent. But  open  the  knife  ?  No,  no,  pet, 
it  will  cut  its  little  hands  !  "  As  for  train- 
ing young  ladies  through  a  long  intel- 
lectual course,  as  we  do  young  men,  it 


52  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

can  never  be  done,  they  will  die  in  the 
process.  Give  woman  all  the  advantages 
and  all  the  education  which  her  organi- 
zation, so  tender  and  delicate,  will  bear, 
but  don't  try  to  make  the  anemone  into 
an  oak,"  and  so  forth.  Thus  the  tender 
and  delicate  organization  stands  in  the 
way,  not  only  of  Herschels  and  La- 
places,  but  of  ordinary  college  graduates. 
Doubtless  our  colleges  are  in  many  re- 
spects excellent  institutions,  but  I  have 
never  been  so  impressed  with  the  weight 
of  learning  invariably  brought  from  them 
as  to  feel  that  the  female  brain  would 
hopelessly  stagger  under  it.  However, 
Dr.  Todd  says  it  would,  and  it  is  perhaps 
unseemly  to  discuss  the  question.  But 
he  is  willing  to  declare  "deliberately 
that  the  female  has  mind  enough,  talent 
enough,  to  go  through  a  complete  col- 
lege course,  but  her  physical  organization 
will  never  admit  of  it,  as  a  general  thing. 


\ 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  68 

I  think  the  great  danger  of  our  day  is 
forcing  the  intellect  of  woman  beyond 
what  her  physical  organization  will  pos- 
sibly bear.  We  want  to  put  our  daugh- 
ters at  school  at  six,  and  have  their 
education  completed  at  eighteen.  A 
girl  would  feel  mortified  not  to  be 
through  schooling  by  the  time  she 
reaches  that  age  "  (a  statement  that  will 
surprise  girls,  I  think).  "In  these  years 
the  poor  thing  has  her  brain  crowded 
with  history,  grammar,  arithmetic,  geog- 
raphy, natural  history,  chemistry,  phys- 
iology, botany,  astronomy,  rhetoric,  nat- 
ural and  moral  philosophy,  metaphysics, 
French,  often  German,  Latin,  perhaps 
Greek,  reading,  spelling,  committing 
poetry,  writing  compositions,  drawing, 
painting,  &c.,  &c.,  ad  infinitum.  Then, 
out  of  school  hours,  from  three  to  six 
hours  of  severe  toil  at  the  piano.  She 
must  be  on    the   strain   all   the    school 


54  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

hours,  study  in  the  evening  till  her  eyes 
ache,  her  brain  whirls,  her  spine  yields 
and  gives  way,  and  she  comes  through 
the  process  of  education,  enervated, 
feeble,  without  courage  or  vigor,  elas- 
ticity or  strength.  Alas  !  must  we  crowd 
education  upon  our  daughters,  and,  for 
the  sake  of  having  them  ^intellectual,' 
make  them  puny,  nervous,  and  their 
whole  earthly  existence  a  struggle  be- 
tween life  and  death?" 

But  Dr.  Todd  wanders  from  his  point. 
In  fact,  it  is  always  hazardous  to  pre- 
dict from  the  beginning  of  his  sentences 
what  the  end  will  be.  He  starts  with 
a  disclaimer  against  female  colleges ;  but 
here  we  find  ourselves  in  the  midst  of 
a  protest  against  female  seminaries.  So 
it  is  not  simply  that  girls  are  unable 
to  go  through  the  course  prescribed  for 
boys ;  they  are  also  unequal  to  that 
prescribed    for    girls.      The    reason    al- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  66 

leged  is,  that  their  health  will  not  per- 
mit it.  "  Now  that  we  have  taken 
woman  in  hand,  we  are  in  danger  of 
educating  her  into  the  grave,  taking 
her  out  of  her  own  beautiful,  honored 
sphere,  and  making  her  an  hermaphro- 
dite, instead  of  what  God  made  her  to 
be." 

Why,  here  is  still  another  fresh  charge 
under  cover  of  the  old  one,  —  a  wheel 
within  the  wheel  within  the  first  wheel. 
Is  Dr.  Todd  springing  a  trap  upon  us? 
All  through  his  discussion  of  the  subject, 
he  has  been  deprecating  female  educa- 
tion solely  on  the  ground  of  female 
weakness ;  but  m  the  very  last  sentence 
he  brings  up  quietly,  as  if  it  were  one 
and  the  same  thing,  an  entirely  new 
and  distinct  objection,  —  strong-minded- 
ness. Is  this  fair  ?  His  woman  being 
educated  into  the  grave,  the  natural  in- 
,  ference    is    that    she    will    stay    there ; 


56  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

but  before  the  breath  is  fairly  out  of 
her  body,  presto  !  she  is  up  again  and 
whirling  out  of  her  sphere !  Now,  with 
all  deference  to  Dr.  Todd's  masculine 
strength,  and  to  that  long  and  severe 
course  of  intellectual  training  which  it 
has  enabled  him  to  undergo,  and  which 
has  so  well  fitted  him  for  his  sphere,  we 
must  submit  that  this  is  putting  rather 
too  fine  a  point  upon  it.  We  may  edu- 
cate our  girls  to  death,  or  we  may  edu- 
cate them  into  woman's-rights  women, 
but  we  cannot  do  both.  Perhaps  a  wo- 
man may  as  well  be  dead  as  be  voting, 
but  they  are  not  yet  synonymous  terms. 
A  girl  cannot  be  in  her  grave  and  be 
going  around  lecturing  at  the  same  time. 
Dr.  Todd  may  have  his  choice  of  the  two 
evils.  Which  does  he  mean,  then,  —  that 
girls  cannot  be  educated  as  men  are, 
because  they  will  die  in  the  process,  or 
because   they  will   mount   his   pet  bug- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  57 

bear,  ride  away  from  their  spheres,  and 
try  to  be  men  ? 

If  any  other  Providence  than  Dr. 
Todd's  were  concerned,  one  might  be 
disposed  to  inquire  its  object  in  giving 
woman  more  mind  than  she  can  cultivate. 
"  A  little  farm  well  tilled "  is  supposed 
to  be  more  profitable  than  ever  so  great 
a  reach  of  waste  land.  Why  endow 
w^oman  with  as  much  mind  as  man,  if 
she  is  forever  incapacitated  from  training 
it?  But  Dr.  Todd's  Providence  is  sui 
generis,  and  we  will  simply  meet  his  as- 
sertion with  another,  —  that  the  female 
not  only  has  mind  enough,  talent 
enough,  but  also  body  enough,  to  go 
through  a  complete  college  course.  Dr. 
Todd  judges,  from  what  he  has  seen  in 
female  schools,  that  it  cannot  be  done. 
I  judge,  from  what  I  have  seen  in  and 
out  of  female  schools,  that  it  can  be 
done.     He    laments    that,   between    the 


58  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

ages  of  six  and  eighteen,  the  poor  thing 
has  her  brain  crowded  with  history, 
grammar,  and  the  rest.  I  affirm  that  if, 
between  the  ages  of  six  and  eighteen,  a 
girl  cannot  get  all  those  things  into  her 
brain  without  crowding  it,  she  is  a  poor 
thing.  A  girl  can  go  to  school,  pursue 
all  the  studies  which  Dr.  Todd  enumer- 
ates, except  ad  infinitum^  know  them, — 
not  as  well  as  a  chemist  knows  chem- 
istry, or  a  botanist  botany,  but  as  well 
as  they  are  known  by  boys  of  her  age 
and  training,  as  well  indeed  as  they 
are  known  by  many  college-taught  men, 
enough  at  least  to  be  a  solace  and  re- 
source to  her,  —  then  graduate  before 
she  is  eighteen,  and  come  out  of  school 
as  healthy,  as  fresh,  as  eager  as  she 
went  in,  and  never  through  her  sub- 
sequent life  know  a  week's,  scarcely  a 
day's  illness.  I  know  this,  for  I  have 
seen   it.     Nature   harmonizes   body  and 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  69 

mind  in  woman  as  well  as  in  man. 
Aching  eyes  and  whirling  brain  and 
yielding  spine  need  no  more  attend  in- 
tellectual activity  in  girls  than  in  boys. 
Let  a  girl  have  a  strong  constitution,  a 
vigorous  body,  and  a  sound  mind,  to 
begin  with,  —  let  her  be  taught  to  work, 
to  play,  to  study,  and  not  to  dawdle, — 
let  her  have  plenty  of  fresh  air,  whole- 
some food,  early  sleep,  active  out-door 
exercise,  and  healthful  dress,  all  of  which 
are  compatible  with  a  long  intellectual 
course,  —  and  she  need  fear  nothing  that 
seminaries  or  colleges  have  to  offer. 
The  reason  why  girls  in  school  and 
out  of  school  are  puny,  enervated,  and 
exhausted  is  not  that  they  are  girls, 
but  that  they  have  inherited  feeble  con- 
stitutions, or  they  have  been  injured 
by  improper  food,  improper  dress,  late 
hours,  unnatural  and  unwholesome  ex- 
citement, or  they  have  been  committed 


60  WOMAN'S   WKONGS. 

to  unskilful  and  incompetent  teachers ; 
and  among  incompetent  teachers  I 
should  certainly  reckon  those  of  Dr. 
Todd's  acquaintance, —  teachers  who,  be- 
sides the  routine  of  school,  require  from 
three  to  six  hours  of  severe  daily  toil 
on  the  piano.  I  do  not  know  any  such 
teachers.  I  never  heard  of  any  such 
practice.  In  all  the  female  schools  I  ever 
knew,  music  v/as  considered  as  a  study, 
and  was  included  in  the  regular  course. 
It  certainly  does  not  demand  such  a 
lion's  share  of  time  in  boys'  schools  or 
colleges,  and  therefore,  in  considering  a 
girl's  chances  of  passing  through  a  col- 
lege safely,  these  three  or  six  hours  may 
be  counted  in  her  favor. 

A  newspaper  paragraph  circulating 
while  I  am  writing  is  so  apposite  that 
I  cannot  refrain  from  transcribing  it. 

The  London  correspondent  of  the 
"  Tribune  "  calls  attention  to  a  work  little 


WOMAN'S   WKONGS.  61 

known  even  in  England,  —  "  Notes  of 
a  Twelve  Years'  Yoyage  of  Discovery  in 
the  First  Six  Books  of  the  ^neis/'  by 
Dr.  James  Henry.  The  author's  ability 
as  a  commentator  has  been  acknowl- 
edged by  Mr.  Conington,  who  has  prof- 
ited by  it  in  his  recent  translation  of 
the  same  epic.  But  the  most  remarkar 
ble  feature  of  this  persistent  study  is 
thus  stated  by  Dr.  Henry  himself:  — 

"  I  have  been,  as  the  title  imports, 
twelve  years,  twelve  of  the  fairest  years 
of  my  life,  engaged  in  this  work ;  en- 
couraged by  no  one,  approved  by  no 
one,  patronized  by  no  one,  receiving  no 
particle  of  assistance  either  at  home  or 
abroad  from  any  one  of  all  the  numer- 
ous persons  who  have,  with  more  or  less 
success,  cultivated  the  same  author,  ex- 
cept alone  the  assistance  which  I  have 
reared  and  created  for  myself  in  my  own 
daughter,  who  has  already,  at  the  age  of 


62  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

twentj-two,  arrived  at  such  a  degree  of 
knowledge  of  the  subject^  that  I  have 
not  printed  a  single  comment  without 
first  submitting  it  to  her  censorship. 
Many  and  valuable  have  been  the  sug- 
gestions I  have  received  from  her,  al- 
though I  have  not  specially  stated  the 
fact,  except  at  ^n.  II.  683/'  in  the 
note  on  which  he  remarks :  _  "  I  cannot 
refuse  myself  the  pleasure  of  informing 
my  readers  that  the  above  very  new, 
and,  it  seems  to  me,  very  true  explana- 
tion of  this  difficult  passage  was  sug- 
gested to  me  by  one  whose  zealous  as- 
sistance and  co-operation  has  all  along 
not  only  lightened  but  rendered  de- 
lightful to  me  the  otherwise  almost  in- 
tolerable labor  of  this  work,  —  I  mean 
my  beloved  daughter,  Katharine  Olivia 
Henry." 

Study  is  healthful.     Eeal   study  con- 
duces   to    peace    of    mind    and    body. 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  63 

Many  girls,  and  boys  too,  are  incapable 
of  it.  I  have  known  parents  lament 
the  effects  of  hard  study  on  their  chil- 
dren, when  those  children  never  knew 
an  hour's  hard  study,  and  never  could 
compass  it  if  their  life  depended  on  it. 
What  they  suffer  from  is  inability  to 
study,  not  study.  Parental  ignorance, 
vice,  weakness,  or  mismanagement  has 
given  them  bodies  and  souls  alike  nerve- 
less and  flaccid.  They  can  go  to  parties, 
follow  the  fashions,  lounge  over  books, 
perhaps  pore  and  worry  over  them;  but 
they  are  utterly  incapable  of  concentra- 
tion, energy,  struggle,  victory.  Their 
minds  are  inane  and  their  bodies  droop- 
ing. Others  have  fine  physical  powers 
in  which  their  puny  souls  are  wellnigh 
lost.  Others  have  strong  souls,  but 
chained  to  a  body  of  death.  By  all 
means  let  such  children  quietly  fall  out 
of  the  ranks.     It  is  only  adding  cruelty 


64  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

to  cruelty  to  require  of  tliem  what  can 
be  done  only  by  able-bodied  souls  and 
able-souled  bodies;  but  to  make  them 
the  standard  —  to  force  healthy,  jubilant 
beings,  all  thrilling  and  tingling  with 
life,  to  keep  step  with  them  —  is  a  device 
worthy  of  Dr.  Todd.  If,  instead  of  labor- 
ing to  dwarf  woman's  intellect  to  the 
measure  of  her  crippled  physical  powers, 
he  had  labored  to  raise  her  physical 
powers  to  the  height  of  her  uncrippled 
intellect,  —  if,  instead  of  showing  parents 
that  they  wrong  their  children  by  try- 
ing to  educate  them,  he  had  shown  the 
earlier  and  deeper  wrong  of  multiply- 
ing children  too  feeble  to  be  educated, — 
he  would,  I  was  about  to  say,  have 
labored  to  some  purpose ;  but  remem- 
bering the  manner  in  which  he  espouses 
a  cause,  I  withdraw  the  suggestion,  and 
only  beg  him  to  fight  it  out  on  the  line 
which   he  has   already  taken.     The  dis- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  65 

covery  of  the  laws  of  life  is  difficult 
and  delicate.  To  put  Dr.  Todd  on  the 
scent  might  be  fatal  to  the  search.  For- 
tunately for  mankind  he  is  committed 
against  its  improvement.  So  far  from 
endeavoring  to  ascertain  the  conditions 
of  advance,  he  strenuously  preaches  that 
the  true  mission  and  highest  glory  of 
the  languid,  enervated,  and  puny  be- 
ings whom  he  portrays  is  to  repro- 
duce themselves  in  the  greatest  possi- 
ble numbers. 

His  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter 
is,  that  "  the  root  of  the  great  error  of 
our  day  is,  that  ivoman  is  to  he  made 
independent  and  self-supporting,  —  pre- 
cisely what  she  never  can  be,  because 
God  never  desigi\ed  she  should  be.  Her 
support,  her  dignity,  her  beauty,  her 
honor  and  happiness,  lie  in  her  depend- 
ence as  wife,  mother,  and  daughter. 
Any   other   theory   is    rebellion    against 


Q6  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

God's  law  of  the  sexes,  —  against  mar- 
riage/' and  so  forth. 

"  0  woman  !  your  worst  enemy  is  he 
who  scouts  at  marriage,  ....  who  would 
cruelly  lift  you  out  of  your  sphere  and 
try  to  reverse  the  very  laws  of  God ; 
who  tries  to  make  you  believe  that  you 
will  find  independence,  wealth,  and  re- 
nown in  man's  sphere,  when  your  only 
safety  and  happiness  is  in  patiently, 
lovingly,  and  faithfully  performing  the 
duties  and  enacting  the  relations  of 
your  own  sphere.  Women  of  my  coun- 
try !  beloved  in  your  own  sphere,  can't 
you  see  that  man,  rough,  stern,  .... 
head,  ...  .  woman,  ....  patient,  ....  lov- 
ing, ....  heart."  I  give  only  the  catch- 
words ;  every  one  can  fill  the  gaps  for 
himself 

It  is  the  old  refrain.  Everything  is 
just  as  it  should  be,  except  that  women 
are  not   contented.      They   are   beloved 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  67 

and  honored  in  their  own  sphere.  Why 
do  they  try  to  leave  it  ?  Women  who 
have  been  oppressed  and  neglected  by 
their  natural  protectors  among  men, 
or  who  have  lost  them  through  illness 
or  death,  claim  opportunity  to  protect 
themselves,  and  are  met  by  the  cry, 
"  The  great  error  of  our  day  is  that 
woman  is  to  be  made  self-supporting." 
Forced  to  do  man's  work,  woman  asks 
as  far  as  possible  man's  advantages,  and 
is  told  that  God  never  designed  she 
should  support  herself  Seventy  thou- 
sand women,  for  whom  no  man  has  been 
or  can  be  provided,  are  told  that  their 
support,  their  dignity,  their  beauty  and 
honor  and  happiness,  lie  in  dependence 
on  some  man.  Any  other  theory  is  re- 
bellion against  God's  law  of  the  sexes, 
and  of  the  universe  generally. 

Dr.  Todd's  aim,  so  far  as  he  has  any, 
eeems   to   be   at   unmarried   women,  es- 


68  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

pecially  in  the  latter  part  of  his  essay. 
But  if  he  will  examine  the  reports  and 
records  of  the  Woman's  Eights  con- 
ventions^ I  think  he  will  find  "Mrs." 
quite  as  often  as  "  Miss "  against  the 
names.  If  he  will  investigate  the  al- 
leged grievances  of  women,  I  think  he 
will  find  the  complaint  of  wives  quite 
as  long  and  loud  and  bitter  as  that  of 
maidens.  If  any  women  scout  at  mar- 
riage, it  is  as  often  they  who  have 
tried  it  as  they  who  have  not.  But 
taking  him  on  his  own  ground,  what 
would  he  have  these  unmarried  women 
do  ?  What  course  does  he  propose  to 
the  girls  who  have  left  school  and  are 
entering  their  womanhood?  Marriage, 
marriage,  marriage,  is  the  one  profession, 
the  one  sphere,  the  one  blessing  which 
he  holds  out  to  them, — 

"A  sovereign  balm  for  every  wound, 
A  cordial  for  their  fears." 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  69 

He  sees  honor,  dignity,  support,  nowhere 
else.  To  this,  and  this  alone,  he  urges 
them  by  every  consideration  earthly 
and  heavenly.  What  then  ?  Shall  the 
girls  take  matters  into  their  own  hands  ? 
Shall  they  swarm  into  the  counting- 
rooms,  the  factories,  the  colleges,  the 
theological  seminaries,  drop  a  courtesy 
to  the  young  men,  and  say,  ^^Sir,  will 
you  please  to  marry  me  ?  "  As  for  sit- 
ting at  home  and  waiting  for  the  young 
men  to  come  to  them,  they  do  that 
now.  Unless  Dr.  Todd  means  that  they 
are  to  go  out  into  the  highways  and 
hedges  and  compel  men  to  come  in,  it 
is  difficult  to  see  what  he  does  mean. 
If  he  permitted  himself  to  use  his  eyes, 
—  a  habit  which  he  gives  no  sign  of 
ever  having  fallen  into,  —  he  would  see 
that  reluctance  to  marriage  is  not  the 
great  or  the  growing  fault  of  women. 
He  would  see  with  deep  inward  shame 


70  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

not  unmixed  with  pity,  that  mental  idle- 
ness, lack  of  purpose  and  interest  in  life, 
poverty,  weakness,  and  bad  teachings, 
have  made  women  so  ready  to  accept 
any  sort  of  marriage,  that  too  often  the 
womanly  name  is  lightly  spoken,  the 
womanly  assent  lightly  valued.  That 
which  should  be  to  men  the  prize  of 
life  they  count  but  an  ordinary  commod- 
ity. Wives  are  to  be  selected,  not  won. 
Love  is  a  serving-man,  not  a  conqueror. 
Marriage  is  a  provision,  an  occupation, 
an  arrangement,  any  coarse  and  common 
thing,  and  Dr.  Todd  will  have  it  so. 

And  the  religious  newspapers  and 
the  secular  newspapers  join  voices  and 
shout  Amen ! 

Here  Dr.  Todd's  argument  ends,  but 
his  peroration  is  so  characteristic^  that 
one  cannot  refrain  from  a  few  notes  of 
admiration.  "  I  have  spoken  to  you, 
gentle  ones,  kindly  and  faithfully."     This 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  71 

is  a  continuation  of  the  conciliatory 
style,  and  is  always  to  be  adopted  in 
addressing  women.  "  Yery  likely  I  may 
have  a  torrent  of  abuse  poured  upon 
me  for  it;  but  it  is  time  that  your 
real  friends  should  no  longer  have  ut- 
terance choked."  Utterance  choked ! 
Have  such  real  friends  as  Dr.  Todd  had 
their  utterance  choked  ?  Then  surely 
they  can  talk  as  well  without  their 
throats  as  with  them,  for  his  talk  has 
been  talked  from  the  foundation  of  the 
world,  —  at  least  as  far  back  towards  it 
as  this  generation  can  remember.  He 
might  have  listened  any  time  within  the 
last  ten  years,  and  found  men  still  harp- 
ing on  my  daughter  on  precisely  his 
own  key,  though  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  peculiar  felicity  of  Dr.  Todd's 
expression  gives  to  the  antiquity  of  his 
thought  a  piquancy  truly  original.  "I 
have  tried  to  select  smooth  stones  from 


72  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

the  brook  for  my  sling,  and  not  to 
wound  those  whom  I  would  defend." 
Is  this,  then,  the  way  to  defend  women, 
by  slinging  stones  at  them?  And  does 
it  mend  the  matter  to  say  that  he  did 
not  mean  to  hurt  them  ?  Would  he  fire 
a  broadside  into  a  female  seminary,  and 
excuse  himself  to  the  bleeding,  moan- 
ing victims  on  the  plea  that  he  took 
round  shot  and  not  conical  ?  "  And  hav- 
ing said  this,  I  only  add,  that  no  provo- 
cation will  force  me  to  speak  on  this 
subject  again." 

Ungentle  ones,  we  fear,  will  add  that 
nothing  in  his  essay  becomes  him  like 
the  ending  of  it. 

And  all  the  Wackford  Squeerses  who 
have  gone  into  the  business  of  news- 
paper editing  smack  their  lips  over  this 
twopenn'orth  of  milk  in  a  mug  of  luke- 
warm water,  and  cry  out  to  their  un- 
lucky readers,  "  Here  's  richness !  " 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  73 

Proving  Dr.  Todd  wrong  is,  I  am  quite 
aware,  a  totally  different  thing  from 
proving  any  one  else  right.  The  fitness 
of  female  suffrage  does  not  depend  upon 
the  character  of  its  adherents  or  op- 
ponents. The  question  stands  precisely 
where  it  stood  before  Dr.  Todd  took  up 
his  pen.  It  has  been  so  long  discussed, 
with  so  much  ability  and  so  much  dis- 
ability, that  it  would  seem  as  if  every 
wise  and  every  foolish  thing  that  could 
be  said  about  it  had  been  already  said, 
and  one  feels  disposed  to  apologize  at 
every  step  for  reopening  the  subject. 
But  the  publication  of  Dr.  Todd's  essay, 
and  its  reception  by  our  reverend  as- 
semblies of  divines  and  our  social  philos- 
ophers, speedily  transform  the  amiable 
disposition  into  an  impulse  to  follow  the 
example  of  the  renowned  Jenny  Geddes, 
and  fling  a  stool  at  their  heads.  A  gen- 
eration that  accepts  "  Woman's  Rights " 


74  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

need  not  complain  of  anything  that  may 
be  offered  it  in  the  way  of  triteness. 

A  remarkable  feature  of  the  discus- 
sion is  the  scarcity  of  reasons  brought 
against  female  suffrage.  There  seems 
to  be  a  sort  of  instinct  against  it,  but 
scarcely  anything  that  can  be  called  a 
reason.  This  instinct  may  in  itself  be 
the  best  of  reasons,  and  if  opponents 
would  only  plant  themselves  there,  sim- 
ply affirming, 

"  I  do  not  like  you,  Dr.  Fell, 
The  reason  why  I  cannot  tell, 
But  this  alone  I  know  full  well, 
I  do  not  like  you.  Dr.  Fell," 

they  would  hold  a  strong  position.  But 
the  things  brought  forward  as  arguments 
are  so  flimsy,  that  argument  and  in- 
stinct are  blown  away  together. 

Nor  is  the  spirit  in  which  the  ques- 
tion is  discussed  always  unexceptionable. 
There    is   something   like  taunt   on    the 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  76 

woman  side,  and  something  like  threat 
on  the  man  side,  not  unnatural  in  the 
circumstanceSj  but  both  alike  unworthy 
of  the  cause  and  unfruitful  of  good. 
Female  suffrage  is  not  an  affair  of  an- 
tagonism between  man  and  woman.  It 
is  not  a  struggle  in  which  women  are 
to  be  the  gainers  and  men  the  losers. 
It  is  one  in  which  both  are  to  gain  or 
both  to  lose  alike.  If  women  ought  to 
vote,  a  woman's  vote  is  as  much  a  man's 
right  as  it  is  a  woman's  right.  If  wo- 
men ought  not  to  vote,  a  woman's  vote 
is  as  great  an  impertinence  to  a  woman 
as  to  a  man.  It  is  not  even  whether 
women  wish  to  vote :  it  is  whether  they 
have  a  right  to  vote;  whether  they 
ought  to  vote ',  whether  the  country 
needs  the  votes  of  her  women,  and  can 
afford  to  do  without  them. 

I  believe  it  is  seldom,  if  ever,  denied 
that   women    have    abstractly   an   equal 


76  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

right  with  men  to  vote.  The  objection 
is,  that  the  exercise  of  that  right  will 
change,  first,  the  womanly  nature,  and 
second,  the  womanly  sphere.  It  will 
make  women  bold,  pushing,  masculine. 
It  is  essentially  unwomanly. 

But  what  is  it  that  is  unwomanly, — 
the  possession  of  political  opinion,  or  the 
expression  of  that  opinion  by  walking 
to  the  vestry,  or  the  town-house,  or  the 
public  hall,  and  putting  a  piece  of  pa- 
per in  a  box  ?  Not  surely  the  former. 
Surely  we  all  know  that  women  are  al- 
ready in  the  habit  of  forming  opinions 
on  politics.  More  than  this,  their  in- 
terest in  and  their  knowledge  of  politics 
are  exactly  in  proportion  to  their  intel- 
ligence, to  their  intellect;  not  at  all  in 
proportion,  to  their  amiability  or  their 
femininity.  A  woman  may  be  ignorant 
of  politics,  and  be  graceful,  lovely,  fas- 
cinating, or   she    may  be    coarse,  harsh, 


N 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  77 

unattractive  -,  but  I  venture  to  say  there 
is  not  in  the  country  a  woman  of  ac- 
tive intelligence  who  is  not  conver- 
sant with  the  general  state  and  aims  of 
political  parties.  Some  of  the  women 
whose  names  have  a  political  prominence 
are  among  the  most  attractive  women 
of  their  time,  others  are  among  the 
most  repulsive.  So  it  seems  that  the 
holding  of  political  opinion  does  not  of 
itself  change  character.  And  if  a  wo- 
man is  not  demoralized  by  saying  to  her 
husband  and  her  visitors  that  she  con- 
siders Mr.  A.  Johnson  an  able  and  ad- 
mirable President,  would  she  be  demor- 
alized by  dropping  into  a  box  a  vote  to 
that  effect  ? 

So  when  it  is  said  that  voting  is  out 
of  the  womanly  sphere,  will  any  one  be 
so  good  as  to  tell  us  what  it  is  that  is 
out  of  her  sphere,  the  possession  or  the 
expression  of  political  opinion  ?     But  pos- 


78  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

session,  as  we  have  seen,  she  already 
holds.  Wives,  mothers,  daughters,  who 
discharge  with  fidehty  every  domestic 
and  social  duty,  are  conversant  with  na- 
tional and  international  affairs.  Nay,  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  affirming  that  ex- 
actly in  proportion  as  a  woman  is  clear- 
sighted, far-sighted,  judicious  in  her  do- 
mestic and  social  administration,  in  just 
that  proportion  is  her  judgment  of  pub- 
he  affairs  clear  and  just  and  wise. 
Faithful  in  least,  faithful  in  much,  is 
not  the  axiom  of  religion  only.  Stories, 
theories,  rumors,  assert  'the  contrary; 
appearances  sometimes  indicate  the  con- 
trary, but  I  never  knew  a  fact  that  did 
not  confirm  this  statement. 

Is  it  then  the  act  of  casting  a  ballot 
which  is  to  draw  or  drive  woman  out 
of  her  sphere,  —  this  woman  who  in  the 
centre  of  her  sphere  has  already  per- 
formed all  the  work  preliminary  to  vot- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  79 

ing,  whose  opinions  are  matured,  whose 
decisions  formed?  But  on  occasion  of 
a  concert,  a  lecture,  even  a  pohtical  ad- 
dress, she  akeady  goes  to  the  same  place 
and  sees  very  nearly  the  same  men  that 
she  would  on  election-days.  At  what 
moment  then,  at  what  point,  does  she 
take  the  fatal  step  that  puts  her  beyond 
her  sphere? 

Is  it  that  the  interest  in  and  knowl- 
edge of  politics  requisite  for  voting  will 
take  too  much  time  that  ought  to  be 
devoted  to  other  and  nearer  duties  by 
the  ordinary  woman  ?  But  what  pro- 
portion of  the  time  of  ordinary  men  — 
merchants,  mechanics,  laborers  —  is  spent 
in  politics  ?  For  how  many  hours  in  the 
day,  for  how  many  days  in  the  year,  for 
how  many  weeks  in  their  lives,  are  they 
drawn  away  from  their  counting-rooms 
and  w^orkshops  by  political  exigencies  ? 
Do  they  not  acquire  their  opinions  un- 


80  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

consciously  as  a  part  of  their  recreation, 
and  is  not  the  time  spent  in  voting  so 
small  as  to  exercise  no  appreciable  influ- 
ence on  the  ordinary  year's  wages  of 
the  common  workingman  ?  Does  the 
wife  of  the  butcher  or  of  the  shoe- 
maker suffer  any  measurable  depriva- 
tion from  her  husband's  absorption  in 
politics  ?  Is  there  anything  in  the  na- 
ture of  woman  which  would  lead  us  to 
suppose  that  her  devotion  to  politics 
would  be  greater  than  that  of  her  hus- 
band or  that  to  her  husband?  or  that 
it  would  be  more  difficult  for  her  to 
acquire  knowledge  than  for  him  ?  On 
the  contrary,  would  not  the  change  from 
the  narrow  circle  of  her  domestic  home 
to  the  great  circle  of  her  national  home 
be  a  benefit  to  her?  Would  it  not 
be  to  her  as  to  her  husband,  and  even 
more  than  to  her  husband,  inasmuch 
as  the  change  to  her  would  be  greater, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  81 

a  refreshment  rather  than  an  additional 
task?  Would  it  not  give  a  spring  to 
her  mind,  a  quickening  to  her  life,  that 
would  react  favorably  on  her  home  ? 
Would  not  the  very  act  of  gaining  po- 
litical knowledge  fit  her  the  better  for 
administering  her  domestic  government  ? 

Is  it  that  voting,  though  an  innocent 
thing  enough  of  itself,  is  the  forerunner 
of  many  evils,  is  but  the  opening  to 
woman  of  offices  and  employments  that 
have  hitherto  belonged  and  are  suitable 
only  to  man  ?  that  female  suffirage  means 
female  electioneering,  stump-speaking, 
office-holding,  and  other  ills  equally  un- 
pleasant to  contemplate  ? 

But  suppose  the  right  of  ballot  should 
indeed  fashion  womankind  politically  af- 
ter the  similitude  of  mankind,  how  ex- 
tensive would  be  the  evil  deprecated  ? 
There  is  indeed  among  men  much  po- 
litical wire-pulling,  yet  how  few,  in  pro- 


82  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

portion  to  the  rest  of  mankind,  are  the 
political  wire-pullers !  Members  of  Con- 
gress are  many,  but  they  do  not  show  up 
largely  among  our  neighbors.  The  name 
of  political  office-holders  is  Legion,  yet 
somehow  they  seldom  drop  in  to  tea. 
And  of  those  that  do  hold  office,  how 
many  hold  it  in  the  most  imperceptible 
manner!  You  may  be  for  weeks  in  the 
company  of  a  modest  selectman,  town- 
clerk,  churchwarden,  and  never  discover 
the  fact,  —  may  imagine  all  the  while 
that  he  is  only  a  lawyer  or  a  grocer. 
If  then  the  holding  of  office  interferes 
so  little  with  men's  business,  why  should 
it  any  more  interfere  with  women's? 
If  so  few  farmers  are  called  from 
their  farms,  and  shoemakers  from  their 
benches,  what  reason  have  we  for  suppos- 
ing that  more  cooks  will  be  drawn  from 
their  ranges  or  washerwomen  from  their 
tubs  ?     Moreover,    there    are    thousands 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  83 

more  of  women  than  of  men,  at  least 
in  Massachusetts ;  and  if  from  Massachu- 
setts men  can  be  spared  and  not  missed, 
how  much  more  the  women !  At  pres- 
ent, when  a  man  is  elected  to  an  office  in- 
compatible with  and  less  important  than 
his  regular  business,  he  simply  declines 
it.  Women  can  always  do  the  same. 
No  one  proposes  to  force  them  to  be 
Presidents  or  even  town  treasurers. 

But  we  need  not  go  so  far  as  this,  for 
Nature  anticipates  us.  These  things,  we 
say,  are  all  unnatural,  and  therefore  they 
are  objectionable.  They  are  unwomanly. 
But  if  they  are  unwomanly,  women  as  a 
class  will  never  take  to  them.  If  home- 
life  is  the  natural  sphere  of  woman,  noth- 
ing but  necessity  will  ever  drive  her 
from  it.  Certainly  no  allurements  will 
ever  draw  her  out.  We  are  never  allured 
to  that  for  which  we  have  no  natural 
taste.     Nothing  is  safer  to  trust  in,  noth- 


84  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

ing  is  harder  to  force,  than  nature.  If 
women  have  a  natural  distaste  and  un- 
fitness for  public  life,  there  is  no  more 
danger  of  their  voting  themselves  into 
public  officers  than  there  is  of  men's 
voting  themselves  into  nursery-maids. 
Undoubtedly  there  are  women  —  excep- 
tional cases,  if  you  please  —  who  are 
much  better  fitted  to  hold  office  than 
most  men.  There  are  women  who  are 
better  orators,  better  mathematicians, 
better  business  managers  than  most  men. 
Voting  will  not  make  them  so,  as  absence 
of  voting  has  not  prevented  their  be- 
coming such.  These  women  may  pos- 
sibly become  public  officers,  but  such 
women  always  have  become  public  offi- 
cers. Fitness  for  the  work  was  long 
ago  considered  a  vindication  of  the 
work.  There  is  no  record  that  the  most 
conservative  Israelites  ever  objected  to 
Deborah's  judgeship,  or  that  Hilkiah  the 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  85 

priest,  or  Shaphan  the  scribe,  or  Asaliiah 
the  king's  servant,  had  any  misgiving 
about  going  to  the  college  to  consult 
Huldah  the  prophetess  who  dwelt  in  it, 
or  that  the  Republican  party  ever  re- 
jected the  votes  which  Miss  Dickinson's 
eloquence  brought  out  in  the  campaign 
of  1860.  If  the  right  of  suJBTrage  shall 
result  in  bringing  woman  from  the  do- 
mestic hearth  to  the  public  hall,  it  will 
only  show  that  we  have  all  been  wrong 
together  in  restricting  her  to  the  former. 
Certainly  we  shall  never  know  what  wo- 
man's natural  sphere  is  till  she  has  an  ab- 
solutely unrestricted  power  of  choice, — 
that  is,  until  her  nature  is  suffered  to 
have  free  play. 

Do  women  indeed  not  wish  to  vote? 
That  is  the  best  of  reasons  why  they 
should  not  be  forced  to  vote,  but  no 
reason  at  all  why  they  should  not  be 
allowed  and  required  to  vote.     Those  of 


86  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

US  who  are  Orthodox  Congregationalists 
know  very  well  that  we  never  excuse 
our  fellow-sinners  from  repentance  be- 
cause they  do  not  wish  to  repent.  This 
very  fact  of  unwillingness  we  bring  as 
the  heaviest  charge  against  them,  and 
with  all  the  more  vehemence  urge  them 
to  a  change  of  heart  as  the  necessary 
precursor  of  a  change  of  life.  If  wo- 
men ought  to  vote,  their  indifference  to 
voting  is  but  a  sign  that  they  are  dead 
in  trespasses  and  sins. 

Moreover,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there 
are  many  women  who  do  wish  to  vote. 
On  what  ground  shall  they  be  debarred 
from  doing  so?  Even  though  it  were 
granted  —  what  is  by  no  means  proved 
—  that  the  majority  of  American  women 
do  not  wish  to  vote,  how  does  that  affect 
the  minority  who  do  wish  it?  Because 
A,  B,  and  C  do  not  wish  to  exercise  a  cer- 
tain right,  shall  D  not  be  allowed  to 
exercise  it  ? 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  87 

Or  is  it  that  women  are,  by  nature, 
education,  or  both,  unfit  to  exercise  the 
right  of  suffrage  ?  This,  if  true,  is  per- 
tinent and  conclusive,  I  am  not  pre- 
pared to  say  that  it  is  not  true.  Un- 
doubtedly a  very  large  number  of  women 
are  by  their  education  unfit  to  vote ;  but 
does  the  same  standard  of  fitness  apply 
to  men?  Are  American  women,  as  a 
class,  more  unfit  to  vote  than  Irishmen  ? 
Are  they  less  capable  of  understanding 
issues  involved,  and  of  passing  judgment 
upon  measures  proposed,  than  negroes 
who  have  been  slaves  for  generations? 
And  if  their  minds  are  so  narrow  that 
they  cannot  comprehend,  and  so  feeble 
that  they  cannot  entertain,  national  ques- 
tions, —  if  they  are  so  unable  to  control 
their  impulses  and  conquer  their  preju- 
dices that  they  cannot  act  wisely  in  na- 
tional contingencies,  —  are  they  fit  to  be 
the  wives  and  mothers,  the  companions 


88  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

and  teaclierS;  of  those  on  whom  thought 
and  action  devolve  ? 

But  whatever  may  be  true  of  the  mass- 
es of  women,  it  will  not  be  denied  that 
there  are  individual  women,  and  a  good 
many  of  them,  who  are  more  fit  to  vote 
than  the  majority  of  voters.  It  will 
not  be  denied  that  the  Mrs.  Stowes,  the 
Miss  Mitchells,  the  Mary  Lyons,  the  Mrs. 
Mills,  the  Madame  de  Staels,  are  as  able 
to  form  an  intelligent  opinion,  even  upon 
questions  of  finance  and  internal  im- 
provements, as  the  laborers  who  are  dig- 
ging in  the  canals,  and  the  shoemakers 
pegging  on  their  benches.  If  fitness  is 
the  standard,  why  is  fitness  excluded 
from,  and  unfitness  admitted  to,  the 
polls  ? 

Does  the  allegation  of  female  unfitness 
come  with  a  good  grace  from  the  lips  of 
men  ?  The  sufirage  has  hitherto  been  in 
their  hands  j  what  is  the  result  ?   Politics, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  89 

which,  whether  considered  as  a  science 
or  an  art,  is  one  of  the  most  noble  and 
dignified  subjects  that  can  occupy  the 
human  mind,  has  fallen  to  the  level  of  a 
miserable  scramble  for  place  and  pelf 
Men  have  made  it  so  foul  and  degraded 
I  a  thing  that  its   very  touch  is  thought 

to  be  contamination  to  women,  and  the 
name  of  politician  is  a  reproach.  The 
polls,  under  the  exclusive  control  of  men, 
have  become  a  place  of  such  desperate 
resort  that  the  word  is  a  proverb  for 
vileness  and  violence.  The  houses  of 
Congress  are  composed  of  men,  theoreti- 
cally of  the  ablest  men  in  the  nation; 
and  in  perhaps  the  greatest  emergency 
of  modern  times  they  only  succeeded  in 
making  a  patchwork  of  reconstruction, 
which  the  President  thrusts  his  fingers 
through  the  moment  they  are  gone  home  ; 
and  if,  alarmed,  they  rush  back  and  patch 
up   the  ghastly  rent,  no  sooner  is  quiet 


90  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

restored,  and  Congress  dispersed,  than 
the  restless  Presidential  fingers  are  pok- 
ing through  another  thin  jolace.  It  is 
not  a  question  of  wise  politics,  but  of 
skilful  workmanship.  We  need  not  in- 
quire whether  they  are  masters  of  state- 
craft ;  they  are  not  even  mechanics. 
Legislation  is  in  the  hands  of  men,  and 
they  cross  and  recross  the  great  currents 
of  society  as  unconsciously  and  as  placid- 
ly as  if  those  currents  had  no  existence ; 
they  tinker  at  the  great  natural  laws  of 
trade  as  confidently  as  they  hammer  the 
red-hot  iron  upon  their  own  anvils ;  they 
tamper  with  the  great  natural  laws  of 
morals  and  manners  as  boldly  as  if  his- 
tory had  left  no  record  of  previous  simi- 
lar attempts,  and  the  kingdom  of  Heaven 
were  to  be  taken  by  an  order  of  the 
General  Court.  All  official  appointments 
are  in  the  hands  of  men,  and  they  have 
made    Fernando  Wood    Mayor  of   New 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  91 

York;  and  sent  John  Morissey  to  Con- 
gresS;  and  put  Andrew  Johnson  in  the 
Presidential  chair. 

One  kind  of  unfitness  in  women  is  said 
to  be  their  intense  personaUty.  They 
never  consider  a  subject  fairly.  They 
always  look  at  every  question  with  refer- 
ence  to  some  man.  In  the  Hght  of  recent 
events,  this  tendency  seems  anything  but 
an  unfitness.  If  the  party  of  freedom 
and  progress  had  looked  a  little  more 
closely  at  the  men  whom  they  set  up  for 
leaders,  it  would  have  been  better  for  the 
party  and  better  for  the  country. 

But  cannot  men  be  trusted  with  the 
interests  of  their  own  wives,  mothers, 
daughters,  sisters  ?  Certainly  they  can- 
not. Men  are  in  the  constant  daily  habit 
of  doing  injustice  to  wife,  mother,  daugh- 
ter, sister.  The  minds  of  women  are 
dwarfed,  their  health  ruined,  their  for- 
tunes squandered,  their  hearts  broken,  by 


92  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

men  who  stand  to  them  in  the  nearest 
and  dearest  relations.  Do  not  men  them- 
selves see  this?  Do  men  trust  men, — 
even  their  own  fathers,  brothers,  and 
sons?  Do  not  the  men  who  ask  this 
question  know  scores  of  men  to  whom 
they  would  be  unwilling  to  trust  the 
interests  of  their  own  mothers  and  sis- 
ters and  daughters?  Moreover,  there 
are  many  women  who  have  none  of  these 
relationships  to  flee  to,  who  stand  alone. 
If  society  were  millennial,  if  men  and 
women  were  infallible,  if  every  woman  on 
arriving  at  maturity  became  the  justly 
beloved  and  honored  wife  of  a  justly 
beloved  and  honored  husband,  and  re- 
mained so  during  all  the  years  of  their 
lives,  she  might  safely  trust  her  interests 
in  his  hands;  but  with  a  society  so  far 
deflected  from  uprightness  as  ours,  with 
human  life  so  far  from  its  ideal,  there 
is    no    class    that    can    safely    delegate 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  93 

its  interests  to  another  class.  It  is 
because  human  nature  is  defective  that 
human  laws  are  made ;  and  human  na- 
ture being  defective^  it  is  never  safe  to 
trust  it  with  irresponsible  power. 

But  will  the  incursion  of  woman  upon 
the  ballot-box  seriously  mend  matters? 
I  fear  not.  Accomplished  in  the  manner 
and  to  the  extent  proposed,  I  honestly 
think  not.  The  association  of  man  and 
woman  is  natural.  Their  dissociation  in 
politics  is  unnatural.  The  exclusion  of 
any  one  class  from  an  equal  position  with 
another  class  regarding  affairs  in  which 
both  have  an  equal  interest,  and  to  which 
both  contribute  an  equal  support,  is  ar- 
bitrary and  unnatural,  and  all  things 
unnatural  are  wrong  and  hurtful.  On 
this  ground  female  suffrage  seems  to  me 
a  right  and  wise  measure,  and  its  pro- 
hibition an  absurdity.  But  beyond  this 
all   is   fog.     What  definite  benefit  is  to 


94  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

accrue  to  woman  or  to  the  State  from 
indiscriminate  female  suffrage,  I  must 
confess,  after  all  the  talk,  I  fail  to  see. 
The  volume  of  the  vote  will  be  in- 
creased, but  I  do  not  see  that  its  propor- 
tion will  be  affected ;  and  the  proportion 
of  the  vote  and  not  its  volume  is  the 
quarter  from  which  danger  threatens. 
True,  in  a  republican  government,  the 
broader  the  basis,  the  better,  provided 
it  be  sound ;  but  if  it  be  not  sound, 
how  can  its  breadth  be  an  element  of 
strength  ?  Believing,  as  I  do,  most  firm- 
ly, that  the  right  of  suffrage  belongs  to 
woman  in  precisely  the  same  measure  as 
to  man,  —  no  more  and  no  less,  —  and 
that  it  will  do  for  woman  precisely  what 
it  does  for  man,  —  no  better  and  no 
worse,  —  still,  were  the  alternative  pre- 
sented to  me  of  changing  the  basis  of 
suffrage,  either  by  extending  the  franchise 
indiscriminately  to  women,  or  by  still  fur- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  95 

ther  restricting  it  among  men,  I  think  T 
should  unhesitatingly  choose  the  latter. 
I  would  far  sooner  trust  the  welfare  of 
the  country  to  the  freely  acting  wisdom 
of  intelligent  and  virtuous  men,  than  to 
the  wisdom  of  intelligent  and  virtuous 
men  and  women,  hampered,  baffled,  and 
overborne  by  the  folly  of  unintelligent 
and  vicious  men  and  women.  On  matters 
of  so  grave  and  vast  importance,  subjects 
which  have  received  the  profound  at- 
tention of  the  deepest  thinkers,  it  may 
seem  presumptuous  for  a  "commoner"  to 
advance  an  opinion.  But  it  is  to  the  glory 
of  the  thinkers  that  they  have  reasoned 
so  closely,  and  spoken  so  clearly,  as  to 
have  brought  the  subject  within  the 
scope  of  common  minds,  and  every  day 
brings  us  visibly  nearer  and  nearer  to  the 
time  when  the  commonest  minds  will  be 
called  on  to  pass  judgment,  which,  if  not 
absolutely  final,  will  be  relatively  so  to 


96  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

t 

many^  and  of  the  most  serious  moment 
to  all. 

To  many  the  flimsiness  and  folly  of  the 
arguments  brought  against  female  suf- 
frage have  been  its  strongest  recommen- 
dation. If  this  is  all  that  so  violent  an 
opposition  can  bring  forward  against  a 
cause,  the  cause  must  be  a  wise  one.  It 
has  seemed  to  me  a  certain  but  a  distant 
event ;  if,  however,  Dr.  Todd  can,  in  the 
language  of  one  of  his  admirers,  be  in- 
duced to  reconsider  his  determination  to 
write  no  more,  it  is  not  impossible  that 
we  may  count  the  female  vote  at  the 
next  Presidential  election !  But  towards 
female  suffrage,  in  itself  considered,  I  have 
never  been  able  to  feel  otherwise  than 
indifferent.  There  are  so  many  things  so 
infinitely  more  important,  more  close  to 
the  welfare  and  happiness  of  society  and 
of  individuals,  and  especially  is  the  hap- 
piness of  woman  so  apart  from,  and  inde- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  97 

pendent  of,  her  right  of  suffrage,  that  it 
has  seemed  an  altogether  secondary  and 
unimportant  matter.  Woman  without 
the  ballot  may  possess  every  condition  of 
a  dignified  womanhood.  Every  reason 
for  withholding  the  ballot  from  her  seems 
simply  frivolous;  but  what  is  there  on 
the  other  side  so  attractive,  so  promising, 
what  is  there  to  arouse  so  much  enthu- 
siasm and  enlist  so  many  energies  ?  It 
would  sometimes  seem,  from  the  tone  of 
discussion,  as  if  the  ballot  were  a  sort  of 
talisman,  with  a  power  to  ward  off  all 
harm  from  its  possessor.  To  me  it  looks 
rather  like  a  clumsy  contrivance  for 
bringing  opinion  to  bear  on  government, 
— fine,  delicate,  precise,  as  compared  with 
the  old-time  method  of  the  sword;  but 
coarse,  blundering,  and  insufficient  when 
compared  with  the  pen,  the  fireside,  and 
the  thousand  subtile  social  influences, 
penetrating,  pervasive,  purifying.     A  few 


98  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

salient  points  of  opinion  the  ballot-box 
grasps  and  presents.  A  sort  of  rough, 
average  justice  it  dispenses,  and  is  so  far 
a  powerful  influence  for  good ;  but  all  the 
delicate  shades  of  opinion  and  all  the  deli- 
cate grades  of  justice  it  misses  and  must 
always  miss.  Voting  is  the  prescribed, 
legal,  official  way  of  expressing  opinion, 
but  there  are  many  other  ways  equally 
powerful. 

When  it  is  argued  that  women  should 
not  vote  because  they  are  already  suf- 
ficiently represented  by  their  husbands, 
brothers,  and  sons,  it  may  justly  be  re- 
plied that  self-appointed  representation  is 
no  representation  at  all.  If  w^omen,  with 
perfect  freedom  of  choice,  choose  that 
these  men  shall  vote  for  them,  they  may 
properly  be  said  to  be  represented;  but 
for  man  to  usurp  their  vote,  and  then  call 
himself  their  representative,  is  simply 
falsehood  and  tyranny.     Women  might, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  99 

with  precisely  the  same  show  of  reason, 
claim  the  vote  on  the  ground  that  men 
would  be  sufficiently  represented  by  their 
mothers,  wives,  and  daughters.  But  is 
not  that  which  is  logically  and  technically 
false  actually  true  ?  Women  are  not 
technically  represented  by  men  -,  but  is 
not  the  opinion  of  the  women  of  the 
country  really  presented  with  as  much 
accuracy  by  the  actual  male  vote  as  it 
would  be  by  the  female  vote  ?  Does  any 
one  suppose  that  if  female  suffi\age  were 
established  in  any  State  to-day,  the  vote 
would  be  materially  changed?  Would 
the  Republican  party  or  the  Democratic 
'party  be  larger  in  relation  to  its  rival 
than  it  is  now  ?  Is  it  not  true  that,  as  a 
general  thing,  the  women  of  a  family  are, 
and  always  will  be,  of  the  same  political 
faith  as  the  men  of  a  family  ?  Or  we 
may  put  it  the  other  way,  and  say  the 
men   of  a   family   always   think   as   the 


100  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

women  do,  —  not  necessarily  from  sub- 
serviency on  either  side,  but  from  the 
great  natural  law  that  birds  of  a  feather 
flock  together.  The  contrary  is  some- 
times assumed.  Female  suffrage  is  op- 
posed on  the  ground  that  it  would  dis- 
turb the  harmony  of  families.  That  is, 
women  must  not  be  allowed  to  speak, 
because  they  will  oppose  men.  This  is 
tyranny  pure  and  simple.  It  shows  that 
the  light  parts  on  our  maps  are  a  delusion, 
and  that  we  are  still  in  barbarism.  But 
I  do  not  think  the  harmony  of  families 
would  be  disturbed.  We  know  that  in 
religion,  which  is  equally  the  "sphere" 
of  both  sexes,  there  is  little  disturbance. 
Many  husbands  indifferent  to  religion 
have  wives  who  are  interested  in  it,  but 
it  is  seldom  that  a  positive  aggressive 
Universalist  and  a  similar  Orthodox  are 
yoked  together.  When  there  is  any 
marked   religious   leaning,  husband   and 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  101 

wife  usually  lean  one  way.  What  differ- 
ence does  it  make  then  whether  the  male 
and  female  thought  be  represented  by  one 
vote  or  two?  Now  the  one  Republican 
vote  is  met  by  the  one  Democratic  vote 
of  the  neighbor  over  the  way.  Then 
the  two  Eepublican  votes  will  be  met  by 
the  two  Democratic  votes  -,  but  the  result 
will  not  be  changed.  There  will  be  a 
few  Democratic  wives  of  Eepublican 
husbands,  but  there  will  be  also  a  few 
Eepublican  wives  of  Democratic  hus- 
bands. 

Women  in  not  voting  are  not  unrepre- 
sented in  the  sense  or  to  the  extent  to 
which  non-voting  negroes  are  unrepre- 
sented. The  African  is  a  separate  race 
from  the  Caucasian,  with  its  own  ambi- 
tions and  traditions.  Either,  without  the 
other,  is  an  entire  and  a  distinct  race ; 
but  the  men  and  women  of  an  Ameri- 
can community  are  one  race.     Either  sex 


102  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

alone  is  but  a  fragment.  Neither  rises  or 
falls  without  taking  the  other  with  it. 
The  male  vote  does  not  represent  male 
thought  alone ;  it  is  the  product  of  both 
male  and  female  thinking.  The  life  of 
our  men  and  women  is  constantly  and 
inextricably  intertwined*  in  the  house, 
in  the  church,  in  the  assembly,  in  work 
and  w^orship  and  recreation,  they  are 
inseparable  companions,  every  moment 
giving  and  receiving  influence.  They 
are  so  closely  joined  that  their  reciprocal 
relations  are  the  most  powerful  and  im- 
portant relations  of  life.  So  the  man 
represents  the  woman  because  he  needs 
must;  and  he  is  equally  represented  by 
the  woman.  In  any  community  the  char- 
acter of  either  sex  may  be  inferred  from 
that  of  the  other.  The  very  laws  that 
bear  so  unjustly  on  woman  represent 
not  only  a  man's  thought  of  woman,  but 
woman's  thought  of  herself     If  the  wo- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  103 

men  of  Massachusetts,  or  of  New  York, 
or  of  any  State  where  there  are  unjust 
laws,  should  rise  in  a  body  as  women 
and  demand  the  repeal  of  those  laws, 
they  would  be  repealed.  Strong  as  are 
love  of  power,  and  the  might  of  brute 
force,  and  the  greed  of  gain,  there  is 
no  man  and  no  law  that  can  stand 
out  against  the  concentrated  will  of 
women.  It  is  because  the  mass  of  wo- 
men do  not  know  what  the  laws  are,  or 
do  not  care,  that  the  laws  stand.  The 
improvement  in  laws  respecting  women 
since  the  Woman's  Rights  agitation  com- 
menced shows  what  can  be  done  even 
by  a  few  women  without  the  ballot. 
This  no  more  militates  against  the  vote 
of  women  than  against  the  vote  of  men ; 
but,  if  true,  it  shows  that,  when  either 
sex  votes,  the  other  does  in  some  sense 
vote  with  it.  It  is  not  the  legislators 
alone,  it  is  the  Woman's  Rights  women 


104  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

who  have  been  at  work  repeaUng  old 
laws  and  enacting  new.  Let  the  women 
of  America  make  up  their  minds  what 
laws  they  want,  and  they  will  have  them, 
and  may  laugh  at  the  ballot. 

It  is  utterly  irrational  to  have  scores 
and  hundreds  of  illiterate  foreigners,  just 
naturalized,  go  to  the  polls  and  send  one 
of  their  own  number  to  make  laws  for 
the  nation,  while  an  educated  and  intel- 
ligent woman  is  not  allowed  to  cast  a 
vote  to  keep  him  at  home.  But  I  see 
no  measure  intended  to  keep  the  igno- 
rant man  away  from  the  polls  3  only  a 
proposition  to  enable  him  to  bring  his 
ignorant  wife  with  him.  We  are  not 
planning  to  order  up  a  reserved  force  of 
intelligence  to  bear  upon  unintelligence ; 
for  the  unintelligence  is  to  order  up  its 
reserves  just  as  freely;  and  the  two  re- 
serves must  pound  away  at  each  oth- 
er, leaving  the  original  forces  precisely 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  105 

where  they  were  before.  Nor  is  it  true 
in  pontics,  as  in'  war,  that  the  two 
trained  and  intelhgent  aUies  are  more 
than  a  match  for  their  untrained  oppo- 
nents. Patrick's  vote  has  precisely  the 
same  power  as  Mr.  Percy  Howard's,  and 
Bridget's  will  count  for  just  as  much 
as  Mrs.  Percy  Howard's  5  and  in  every- 
thing except  the  vote  intelligence  has 
full  play  now.  Nay,  if  there  is  any 
advantage,  I  believe  it  is  on  the  side  of 
Patrick.  It  is  easier  to  command  the 
vote  of  the  ignorant  in  a  body  for  the 
wrong,  than  that  of  the  wise  in  a  body 
for  the  right. 

If  women  say  all  this  is  speculation 
and  irrelevant,  that  they  have  a  right 
to  vote  and  wish  to  exercise  it,  the  ar- 
gument is  valid.  The  burden  of  proof 
Hes  with  those  who  deny  the  existence 
and  the  exercise  of  this  right.  I  deny 
neither,  but  only  attempt  to  show  that  it 


106  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

is  a  subordinate  and  comparatively  insig- 
nificant matter. 

How  will  the  possession  of  the  ballot 
affect  in  any  way  the  vexed  question 
of  work  and  wages  ?  One  orator  says : 
"Shall  Senators  tell  me  in  their  places 
that  I  have  no  need  of  the  ballot,  when 
forty  thousand  women  in  the  city  of 
New  York  alone  are  earning  their  daily 
bread  at  starving  prices  with  the  needle?" 
But  what  will  the  ballot  do  for  those 
forty  thousand  women  when  they  get  it  ? 
It  will  not  give  them  husbands,  nor  make 
their  thriftless  husbands  provident,  nor 
their  invalid  husbands  healthy.  They 
cannot  vote  themselves  out  of  their  dark, 
unwholesome  sewing-rooms  into  count- 
ing-rooms and  insurance  offices,  nor  have 
they  generally  the  qualifications  which 
these  places  require.  The  ballot  will  not 
enable  them  to  do  anything  for  which 
their  constitution  or  their  education  has 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  107 

not  fitted  therrij  and  I  do  not  know  of 
any  law  now  which  prevents  them  from 
doing  anything  for  which  they  are  fitted, 
except  the  holding  of  government  ofiices. 
I  can  think  of  no  other  occupation  which 
the  right  of  suffrage  will  open  to  woman, 
and  of  public  officers  the  number  must 
always  be,  in  proportion  to  the  popula- 
tion, insignificant.  If,  as  is  afiirmed,  poli- 
tics is  "  out  of  her  sphere,"  if,  as  I  should 
say,  and  as  I  certainly  believe,  the  nature 
of  woman  inclines  her  to  private  and 
domestic,  rather  than  to  public  life,  the 
women  who  will  fill  the  higher  ofiices 
will  be  very  few;  and,  after  the  subor- 
dinate ofiices  are  filled,  the  bulk  of  the 
female  population  will  still  remain  to  be 
provided  for.  It  could  hardly  be  other- 
wise without  calamity.  Says  a  female 
writer :  "  How  many  doors  to  remuner- 
ative employments  would  be  thrown 
open  to  woman  if  she  had  the   ballot! 


108  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

How  politicians  would  interest  them- 
selves in  finding  places  for  her  !  "  But 
I  can  only  say,  far  distant  be  that  day ! 
If  the  possession  of  the  ballot  is  to  en- 
list woman  in  the  great  army  of  office- 
seekers,  it  will  be  a  disastrous  possession 
both  to  herself  and  the  state.  I  can- 
not look  upon  such  a  sentiment  from  a 
woman  without  dismay.  Are  women  to 
be  elevated  by  becoming  entangled  with 
politicians  and  intriguing  for  places  ? 
Are  men  thus  elevated  ?  Is  it  gener- 
ally considered  a  creditable  and  honora- 
ble employment  for  men  to  be  hanging 
upon  the  skirts  of  Congressmen?  Find- 
ing places  for  her !  I  trust  the  ballot, 
if  it  does  anything,  will  enable  woman 
to  command  place  for  herself  I  trust 
that  the  mischievous  doctrine  that  places 
are  to  be  found  for  persons,  and  not  per- 
sons for  places,  will  receive  no  counte- 
nance from  women.    The  enormous  losses 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  109 

in  purse  and  reputation  already  sustained 
by  the  country  from  the  incompetence 
and  dishonesty  of  her  servants  are  suf- 
ficiently appalling.  So  far  as  women 
have  any  influence,  let  them  teach  that 
the  honor,  the  prosperity,  the  resources 
of  the  country  are  a  sacred  trust,  to  be 
committed  to  the  most  worthy,  not  a 
huge  treasure-trove  to  be  plundered  by 
the  most  needy  and  greedy.  For  women, 
if  office  they  are  to  have,  I  pray  let  of- 
fice always  seek  them,  but  let  them 
never  seek  office. 

Is  it  said  that  the  impetus  given  to 
woman  by  the  social  elevation  conse- 
quent on  the  possession  of  the  ballot 
will  act  in  every  direction,  will  quicken 
all  her  energies,  will  impel  her  into  a 
thousand  paths  which  now  she  never 
dreams  of  entering,  and  will  give  her  an 
importance  in  the  eyes  of  men  which  will 
effectually  secure  her  from  their  oppres- 
sion? 


110-  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

But  how  is  this  work  to  be  wrought? 
Does  the  possession  of  the  ballot  really 
mark  any  practical  social  elevation  for 
women  ?  Will  they  stand,  either  in  their 
own  view  or  in  that  of  men,  any  higher  ? 
Will  they  have  more  social  influence,  or, 
if  their  vote  be  the  duplicate  of  the  male 
vote,  will  they  have  any  separate  political 
influence  ?  The  vote  in  the  hands  of  the 
freedman  marks  a  real  change.  He  was 
a  slave;  he  is  a  man,  and  the  ballot  is 
at  once  the  sign  and  the  staff  of  his  free- 
dom. But  women  are  free-born.  They 
have  an  acknowledged,  or  at  least  an  un- 
contested right  to  form  and  to  express 
opinions  on  every  subject,  in  every  way 
that  man  has,  save  one.  Much  real  power 
of  expression,  much  actual  influence,  they 
possess  which  men  do  not.  They  have 
ilo  consciousness  of  inferiority.  Those 
women  who  are  wise  and  thoughtful, 
who  understand  politics,  political  and  his- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  Ill 

toricalj  and  who  comprehend  situations, 
are  too  high  to  be  degraded  by  the  ab- 
sence of  the  ballot.  Classing  them  with 
idiots  does  not  make  them  idiots.  The 
classification  fixes  the  status  of  the  clas- 
sifiers, not  of  the  classified.  Their  rank 
and  power  in  society,  and  their  self- 
respect,  will  not  be  touched  by  suffrage. 
The  influence  of  any  woman's  vote  is 
slight  compared  with  that  of  her  voice. 
As  for  the  feeble  and  frivolous  women, 
—  the  women  who  are  given  over  to 
trivialities,  who  know  and  care  nothing 
for  politics,  and  reckon  their  ignorance 
an  accomplishment, — will  the  ballot  raise 
them  up  into  dignified  human  beings  ? 
I  hope  so.  It  is,  indeed,  almost  the  only 
ground  of  hope  ;  it  is  almost  the  only 
direction  in  which  there  seems  to  be  a 
prospect  of  any  definite  advantage  from 
female  suffrage ;  but  I  fear  not.  If  wo- 
men can  live  in  the  midst  of  the  deep. 


112  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

strong  excitement  of  the  times,  if  their 
ears  can  be  filled  with  the  discussion  of 
questions  which  affect  the  honor  and 
safety  of  the  country,  and  yet  brain 
and  heart  remain  untouched,  there  is 
reason  to  fear  that  the  franchise  will 
fail  to  enfranchise  them.  All  this  is  no 
reason  for  withholding  it.  I  only  inti- 
mate that  such  withholding  cannot  be 
considered  the  cause  of  the  apathy  which 
prevails,  and  that  the  bestowal  of  the 
ballot  will  hardly  dispel  the  apathy.  It 
is  only  that  the  ballot  has  no  power 
to  elevate  those  who  are  unworthy  to 
hold  it.  The  "mobs  and  rowdies"  have 
long  held  the  ballot,  but  are  no  less  mobs 
and  rowdies.  The  ballot  neither  ele- 
vates nor  depresses.  It  takes  its  char- 
acter from  its  possessor. 

What  incitement  to  honor,  profit,  edu- 
cation, do  women  miss  in  missing  the 
ballot?     What   barrier    will    it    remove, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  113 

what  stimulus  present?  The  brilliant 
prizes  of  life  are  already  open  to  female 
competition.  There  are  still  unequal 
laws,  but  not  so  many,  or  so  severe,  as  to 
prevent  any  woman's  becoming  whatever 
she  has  power  to  become  in  any  walk  of 
life  except  the  political.  Within  her 
grasp  lies  all  the  freedom  which  she  has 
the  nerve  to  secure.  Prejudice  itself  has 
softened  down  into  an  insipidity  which 
is  no  obstacle  to  a  really  robust  soul. 
There  may  be  petty  jealousies  to  impede 
and  annoy,  but  these  the  ballot  will  not 
remove ;  and  these  excellence,  without 
the  ballot,  will  remove.  Art,  literature, 
science,  theology,  medicine,  —  all  lie  in 
her  manor,  but  how  largely  are  they 
left  uncultivated !  Miss  Dickinson  has 
had  a  career  more  brilliant  than  that  of 
most  men,  but  she  stands  almost  alone 
upon  the  platform.  Miss  Hosmer's  po- 
sition is  honorable  and  secure,  but  her 


114  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

followers  are  few.  Mrs.  Stowe  has  left 
all  men  far  behind  her,  but  the  female 
story-writers  are  no  better  than  they 
were  before  Uncle  Tom  came,  and 
spoke,  and  conquered.  What  has  the 
ballot  to  do  with  such  women?  It  can 
give  them  no  more  money,  for  they  al- 
ready command  the  highest  market-price. 
It  can  give  them  no  social  standing,  for 
they  rank  first  now.  Does  the  want  of 
it  keep  any  one  from  adopting  their  ca- 
reer? I  venture  to  say  that  there  is 
not  at  this  moment  in  the  whole  coun- 
try a  woman  who  is  held  back  from 
public  speaking,  or  from  any  of  the  finer 
or  higher  arts,  for  lack  of  voting.  If 
women  held  to-morrow  the  right  of  suf- 
frage, there  would  not  be  any  more 
female  lawyers,  preachers,  artists,  doc- 
tors, than  there  are  to-day.  The  oppo- 
nents of  female  suffrage  think  otherwise. 
Strongly  declaring  that  these  things  are 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  115 

repugnant  to  womanlioodj  they  profess 
to  believe  that  no  sooner  is  woman  ab- 
solutely free  than  she  at  once  rushes 
into  them;  that  is,  the  moment  nature 
has  scope,  it  turns  upon  itself  But  I 
believe  that  women  do,  and  always  will, 
of  their  own  choice,  prefer  seclusion  to 
publicity;  for  they  have  now  sufficient 
freedom  of  choice  to  indicate  this.  There 
is  nothing  now  to  hinder  a  woman  from 
taking  charge  of  a  church,  if  she  and  the 
church  wish  it.  Indeed,  women  to-day 
hold  pastorates,  and  no  one  molests  them. 
Probably  there  is  not  a  village  or  a  city 
in  New  England  where  a  woman  would 
not  be  listened  to  respectfully,  and  given 
full  credit  for  all  her  wit  and  wisdom. 
Let  any  woman,  who  is  moved  to  address 
a  public  assembly,  announce  such  an 
intention,  and  she  will  have  a  larger 
audience  than  a  man  of  similar  ability, 
and  she  will   have    at   least  an  equally 


116  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

appreciative  hearing.  If  she  can  sus- 
tain herself;  she  will  be  sustained  by  the 
public. 

Is  it  said  that  women  are  not  yet 
educated  to  fill  these  public  positions, 
and  therefore  they  do  not  come  forward  ? 
But  every  school,  except  the  highest,  is 
open  to  girls  now;  and  even  the  doors 
of  colleges  are  beginning  to  creak  on 
their  hinges.  The  self-same  day  on  which 
women  wish  to  go  to  college,  they  will 
go.  While  men  are  hesitating,  colleges 
are  founding  for  women;  but  if  a  force 
of  sixty  girls,  well  fitted  for  college, 
should  beleaguer  old  Harvard  to-day, 
they  would  compel  her  to  capitulate. 
Nay,  if  twenty  girl-graduates  of  high 
schools  should  knock  at  her  doors  for 
admission,  those  doors  might  groan  and 
grate  harsh  thunder,  but  they  would 
swing  open,  and  let  them  in.  Mean- 
while,  I   suppose    our   high  schools   are 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  117 

quite  equal  to  the  colleges  of  fifty  years 
ago,  so  that  ghis  now  may  have  as  good 
an  education  as  their  grandfathers,  and 
really  their  grandfathers  made  a  very 
respectable  figure. 

I  am  willing  to  admit  that  our  girls 
generally  are  not  half  educated,  but  I  fail 
to  see  how  the  ballot  is  responsible  for 
the  deficiency.  This  is  no  reason  why 
the  ballot  should  be  refused  them,  but  it 
is  a  reason  why  they  need  not  be  listless 
and  miserable  without  it.  It  is  a  reason 
why  we  may  not  attribute  our  lack  of 
female  orators,  artists,  writers,  and  speak- 
ers to  its  absence. 

Still  we  have  not  reached  the  masses, 
—  the  Avomen  who  have  no  inward,  irre- 
sistible bent  to  anything,  who  have  no 
ambition  for  a  career,  but  who  must  earn 
their  own  living,  who,  while  the  leaders 
are  conquering  all  opposition,  all  circum- 
stances, still  remain,  thirty-nine  thousand 


118  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

and  five  hundred  out  of  forty  thousand, 
for  whose  sake  the  ballot  is  demanded, 
and  whose  fortunes  the  ballot  is  expected 
to  create.  We  have  as  yet  found  no  an- 
swer to  the  question,  What  will  the  ballot 
do  for  them  ?  A  thousand  employments 
it  will  give  them,  say  its  advocates,  but 
they  do  not  specify  ten.  Indeed,  I  cannot 
find  one.  Is  it,  in  fact,  the  want  of  the 
ballot  that  keeps  them  at  starving  prices, 
any  more  than  it  is  the  want  of  the  bal- 
lot that  keeps  them  back  from  art  and 
science  ?  I  think  not.  All  suffering  is 
pitiable,  but  I  cannot  spend  all  my  pity 
on  these  forty  thousand.  I  pity  myself. 
I  pity  the  twice  forty  thousand  women 
in  New  York  who  are  annoyed,  hin- 
dered, and  injured  by  the  incapacity  of 
foreign  servants  that  do  not  know  the 
difference  between  a  castor  and  a  tureen, 
or  between  truth  and  falsehood ;  but 
whose    lives    might    grow    smooth    and 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  119 

peaceful  through  the  advent  of  forty 
thousand  intelligent  American  servants. 
These  forty  thousand  women  are  starving 
over  their  needles,  but  if  a  busy  house- 
mother wants  a  plain  dress  made,  she 
must  pay  ten  dollars  for  the  work,  be- 
speak it  a  month  beforehand  at  that, 
and  submit  to  whatever  abstraction  of 
pieces  the  dress-maker  or  her  apprentices 
choose  to  make.  Not  to  speak  of  dress- 
making, it  is  no  easy  matter  to  secure 
really  good  plain  sewing ;  and  really  good 
plain  sewing,  so  far  as  I  know,  always 
commands  good  pay.  Why  then  do  not 
these  women  who  are  starving  over  the 
needle  make  fine  dresses  for  twenty  dol- 
lars, instead  of  coarse  trousers  for  twenty 
cents  ?  Why  do  they  not  become  mil- 
liners and  mantua-makers,  and  earn  a  for- 
tune and  an  independent  position,  instead 
of  remaining  slop-makers,  earning  barely 
a  living,  and  never  rising  above  a  ser- 


120  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

vile  and  cringing  dependence  ?  It  is  be- 
cause they  have  not  the  requisite  skill  or 
money ;  but  of  these  they  cannot  vote 
themselves  a  supply.  Here  is  a  girl 
who  wants  some  other  work  than  sew- 
ing. She  goes  to  a  counting-room,  and 
is  offered,  by  way  of  trial,  a  package 
of  letters  to  copy.  The  work  is  expect- 
ed to  occupy  about  a  week,  and  she 
is  to  be  paid  twenty-five  dollars.  She 
brings  back  the  letters,  copied  in  a  clear, 
round  hand,  but  so  carelessly  and  in- 
accurately that  her  work  is  worthless. 
Here  is  a  pretty,  bright  young  woman, 
engaged  with  a  roomful  of  companions 
in  a  similar  work,  and  actually  boasting 
that  her  employers  "cannot  do  anything 
with  us.  They  make  rules  that  we  are 
to  be  here  at  such  times,  and  to  leave  the 
room  only  at  such  times,  and  do  only  such 
and  such  things ;  but  we  will  do  just  as 
we  like";  and  I  am  not  surprised  by- and 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  121 

by  to  hear  that  there  is  trouble  brewing, 
nor  do  I  see  how  the  right  of  suffrage  is 
to  remove  the  trouble.  There  are  so 
many  things  to  be  taken  into  the  account, 
that  one  has  need  of  great  caution  in 
forming  opinions ;  but  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  great  and  simple  cause  of  the 
low  wages  paid  to  women  is  the  low  work 
they  produce.  They  are  equal  only  to 
the  coarse,  common  labor;  they  get  only 
the  coarse,  common  pay,  and  there  are 
such  multitudes  of  them  that  their  em- 
ployer has  everything  his  own  way.  The 
moment  they  rise  to  a  higher  grade  of 
work,  the  crowd  thins,  and  they  become 
masters  of  the  situation.  It  may  not  be 
their  fault  that  they  are  not  skilled  arti- 
sans, but  I  suppose  trade  takes  into  ac- 
count only  facts,  not  causes.  I  am  not 
now  exculpating  or  inculpating  those 
who  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor.  I  am 
not  speaking  of  them  at  all.      I  desire 


122  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

and  design  to  look  at  the  question  solely 
from  the  woman's  point  of  view.  The 
laws  of  supply  and  demand  are  just  as 
rigorous  as  if  the  brutal  and  profane 
head-shopman  were  a  wooden  automaton. 
There  are  a  few  employers  who  modify 
them  by  moral  laws;  but  to  the  great 
mass  work  is  worth  just  what  it  can  be 
got  for,  and  so  long  as  work  can  be 
got  at  starving  prices,  living  prices  will 
not  be  paid.  What  can  the  ballot  do 
here?  Nothing  but  mischief  The  rela- 
tions between  employer  and  employed 
the  law  seldom  touches  but  to  disturb. 
^^  Hands  off"  is  all  we  want  of  govern- 
ment,—  its  own  hands  and  all  others. 
Freedom,  not  fostering,  is  its  aim,  —  or 
fostering  only  through  freedom.  Only 
so  far  as  government  continually  tends 
to  non-government,  continually  tends  to 
relegate  its  power  to  the  individual,  to 
decrease  itself  and  to  increase  the  citizen, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  123 

is   it   performing   the    true   function   of 
government. 

But  if  women  are  prevented  from  es- 
tablishing themselves  in  business  through 
want  of  means,  they  need  not  on  that 
account  work  at  starving  prices.  I  sus- 
pect that  every  one  of  those  forty  thou- 
sand women  could  find  a  comfortable 
home  in  New  York,  —  a  home  in  which 
she  would  have  plenty  of  wholesome 
food  and  sufficient  shelter,  and  in  which 
she  could  earn  besides  two  or  three  dol- 
lars a  week,  if  she  would  accept  the 
home.  The  work  would  be  more  health- 
ful and  far  less  exhaustive  than  the  star- 
vation sewing.  Household  service  is 
always  in  demand.  A  woman  needs  no 
capital  to  enter  upon  it.  Even  skill  is 
not  indispensable.  There  are  thousands 
of  families  to  which,  if  an  intelligent,  vir- 
tuous, and  ordinarily  healthful  woman 
should  go  and  say,  "  I  have  been  starving 


•  124  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

with  my  needle,  and  I  desire  now  to  try 
housework.  I  know  very  httle  about  it, 
but  I  have  determined  to  devote  myself 
to  it,  and  am  resolved  to  become  mistress 
of  it,"  she  would  be  welcomed.  Here,  by 
exercising  those  virtues  and  graces  which 
every  human  being  ought  to  exercise, — 
by  being  faithful,  good-humored,  and  effi- 
cient,—  she  could  speedily  become  an 
honored  and  valued  member  of  the  family, 
and  secure  herself  a  home  that  would  last 
as  long  as  the  family  held  together.  She 
could  make  herself  as  useful  to  the  family 
as  the  family  is  to  her.  Where  is  the 
sense  in  a  woman's  starving  because  she 
has  no  food  in  her  hands,  when  a  wo- 
man is  starving  by  her  side  because  she 
has  no  hands  for  her  food  ?  I  feel  indig- 
nant when  I  hear  these  multiplied  stories 
of  wholesale  destitution.  I  am  disposed 
to  say  to  these  women :  If  you  choose  to 
stay  at  home  and  perish,  rather  than  go 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  125 

into  your  neighbor's  kitchen  and  supply 
your  wants,  do  so ;  but  do  not  appeal 
to  those  for  pity  from  whom  you  refuse 
employment.  I  know  there  are  many 
who  are  tied  to  their  own  wretched 
homes;  but  if  those  who  are  unencum- 
bered would  resort  to  the  kitchens  of  the 
rich,  it  would  relieve  the  stress  of  compe- 
tition, those  who  remain  would  command 
a  better  price  for  their  labor,  and  star- 
vation would  be  permanently  stopped.  I 
do  not  say  this  because  housework  is 
woman's  sphere,  but  because  it  is  honest 
work  that  calls  her,  and  any  honest  work 
in  her  power  is  better  than  starvation, 
and  more  dignified  than  complaint  and 
outcry.  If  it  were  picking  apples,  or 
gathering  huckleberries,  instead  of  house- 
work, I  should  recommend  that  just  the 
same.  The  case  of  the  woman  is  pre- 
cisely the  case  of  the  man.  If  a  man 
had  palpable  artistic  genius,  we  should 


126  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

earnestly  desire  for  him  artistic  employ- 
ment ;  but  if  he  could  by  no  means  suc- 
ceed in  securing  it,  we  should  certainly 
advise  him  to  chop  wood,  however  disa- 
greeable wood-chopping  be  to  him,  rath- 
er than  die ;  and  if  he  chose  to  shiver 
and  starve  at  his  home,  rather  than 
come  and  cut  my  wood,  for  want  of 
which  I  stand  shivering,  I  should  take 
his  starvation  with  great  equanimity. 
So  with  women.  No  one  has  a  right  to 
tell  women  what  they  ought  to  do,  to 
dictate  to  them  their  sphere.  But  when 
women  cry  out  that  they  are  dying  for 
want  of  the  ballot,  we  have  a  right  to 
say:  Not  so.  Unquestionably  you  are 
dying,  and  unquestionably  you  have  not 
the  ballot;  but  the  two  do  not  stand  in 
the  relation  of  effect  and  cause.  Equally 
without  question  you  ought  to  have  the 
ballot  3  but  it  is  not  the  ballot  which 
will  raise  you  up  from  this  sickness. 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  127 

I  admit  that  there  are  serious  draw- 
backs to  household  service,  —  some  draw- 
backs of  an  honest  self-respect,  some 
of  a  foolish  self-disrespect,  calling  itself 
pride.  It  is  often  said,  that,  if  a  woman 
could  be  taken  into  a  family  on  a  foot- 
ing of  equality, — meaning  chiefly,  I  find, 
if  she  could  sit  at  the  family  table, — 
there  would  be  less  reluctance  to  domes- 
tic service.  It  is  not  reasonable  to  ex- 
pect that  an  intelligent  American  woman 
should  be  willing  to  consort  with  low 
and  ignorant  foreigners.  But  it  would 
scarcely  be  hazardous  to  predict,  that, 
if  intelligent  American  women  would 
go  into  American  kitchens,  they  would 
quickly  drive  out  the  unintelligent  for- 
eigners; and  for  the  rest,  the  matter  of 
equality  is  simply  trivial.  Social  posi- 
tion adjusts  itself  where  there  is  social 
worth.  The  servant  in  the  kitchen  maj^ 
be  wholly   superior   to    the   mistress   in 


128  WOMAN'S   WKONGS. 

the  parlor,  or  she  may  be  mferior;  but 
sitting  together  at  table  affects  the  ques- 
tion not  at  all.  It  may  be  requiring 
more  insight  than  we  have  a  right  to 
expect,  to  ask  the  mass  of  women  to  see 
this.  But  any  one  can  see  that  the  table 
is  often  the  only  place  where  the  family 
can  meet,  and  a  stranger's  presence  de- 
stroys the  confidence  and  freedom  which 
make  the  charm  of  family  life.  The  fam- 
ily do  not  object  to  the  servant's  pres- 
ence necessarily  because  she  is  not  equal 
to  themselves,  but  because  she  is  not 
one  of  themselves.  They  are  quite  right. 
Family  seclusion  can  scarcely  be  too  sa- 
credly guarded ;  and  the  woman  who 
wishes  to  encroach  upon  it  —  who  is  so 
blind  that  she  cannot  see  that  there  is 
anything  to  be  encroached  upon  —  shows 
by  that  token  her  unfitness  to  share 
it.  There  is,  too,  much  less  danger  of 
clashing  when  mistress   and  maid  have 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  129 

their  orbits  on  different  planes.  Duties 
are  far  more  clearly  defined,  and  rela- 
tions far  less  complicated ;  and  if  the 
maid  have  ability,  she  will  gradually  as- 
sume an  almost  commanding  position  in 
the  household.  She  will  be  less  its  ser- 
vant than  its  friend,  its  care-taker,  hon- 
ored and  prized  beyond  what  money  can 
express. 

But  there  is  also,  it  must  be  admitted, 
a  well-grounded  repugnance  to  house- 
hold service  because  of  the  character 
of  the  householders.  There  are  women 
who  seem  to  have  no  suspicion  that  ser- 
vants have  any  rights,  tastes,  or  feelings 
which  mistresses  are  bound  to  respect. 
They  are  exacting  and  petulant.  They 
make  no  allowance  for  human  nature. 
They  take  no  thought  for  the  comfort, 
the  health,  or  the  welfare  of  their  ser- 
vants, but  expect  the  servant  to  take 
constant    thought   for   theirs.     It  never 


130  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

occurs  to  them  that  a  servant  has  any 
need  of  rest  or  recreation,  of  society  or 
sunshine.  They  consider  the  servant  an 
absolute  dependant,  and  themselves  ab 
solute  monarchs.  Perhaps  there  is  no 
remedy  for  this  but  to  let  such  women 
alone.  And  yet,  at  the  worst,  are  the 
selfishness  and  unreason  of  a  mistress 
worse  than  those  of  a  master  ?  Possibly. 
More  petty,  constant,  and  irritating,  per- 
haps, but  not  so  brutal,  so  repulsive.  At 
the  worst,  are  the  small  rooms,  the  close 
kitchens,  the  constant  calls,  worse  than 
the  long  monotonous  days  spent  over 
the  health-  and  heart-destroying  needle? 
But  the  worst  cases  are  comparatively 
few,  though  they  bring  all  others  into 
bad  odor.  The  actually  good  places  are 
not  few,  and  the  passable  places  are  many, 
and  will  be  more,  just  as  fast  as  good 
women  can  be  found  to  fill  them.  Let 
intelligence  and  modesty   and  worth  go 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  131 

into  the  kitchen^  and  they  must  soon  bring 
intelHgence  and  modesty  and  worth  into 
the  parlor.  There  is  also  another  advan- 
tage for  young  women :  while  all  their 
copying  or  shop-keeping  has  no  peculiar 
value  except  as  a  trade,  housework  is 
an  apprenticeship  which  may  be  very 
useful  to  them  in  a  different  position. 
They  are  not  only  gaining  money,  com- 
fort, and  independence,  but  they  are  fit- 
ting themselves  for  keeping  their  own 
houses,  if  they  shall  ever  have  houses  to 
keep.  With  their  one  stone  they  are 
hitting  all  the  birds  they  will  ever  be 
likely  to  have  a  chance  at. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  this  back- 
wardness about  entering  household  ser- 
vice is  entirely  owing  to  indisposition. 
Much,  doubtless,  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
supply  does  not  know  how  to  get  at 
demand.  The  women  who  are  bending 
over  the  needle  are  not  able  to   be  far 


132  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

or  clear  sighted,  and  they  see  nothing 
else  to  do  but  to  live  on  from  hand  to 
mouth.  They  cannot  give  up  their  sew- 
ing long  enough  to  seek  places.  They 
have  no  capital  to  live  on  while  in 
search  of  them.  There  is  a  pathos  in 
the  fact  that  a  single  advertisement  a 
short  time  since,  as  I  happen  to  know, 
brought  nearly  three  hundred  answers ; 
and  the  advertiser  secured,  not  only  for 
himself  but  for  several  friends,  admira- 
ble domestic  assistants.  This,  at  least, 
is  certain;  in  a  country  where  the  con- 
ditions of  life  are  as  equal  as  in  ours, 
and  where  the  male  population  is  always 
in  excess  of  the  female,  there  is  not  the 
slightest  need  of  any  woman's  starving 
for  want  of  remunerative  work.  But  the 
irregularity  or  absence  of  communica- 
tion between  those  who  want  work  done 
and  those  who  want  to  do  work,  is  a 
matter  for   individual  enterprise,  rather 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  133 

than  for  legislative  enactment.  The 
establishment  of  a  bureau  to  supply  the 
defect,  and  bring  the  two  pressing  wants 
face  to  face,  would  seem  to  be  a  fine  ob- 
ject of  philanthropic  activity,  and  very 
likely  of  business  ability.  To  wait  for 
the  ballot  to  do  this  is  worthy  of  the 
subjects  of  an  Oriental  absolutism,  not 
of  the  citizens  of  a  great  Kepublic. 

What  can  the  ballot  do  towards  equal- 
izing wages,  where  work  is  already  equal- 
ized without  affecting  wages,  as  is  not 
unfrequently  the  case  ?  There  are  shops 
of  the  same  sort,  on  the  same  street,  with 
male  clerks  in  one  and  female  clerks  in 
another,  where  the  former  work  fewer 
hours  and  receive  higher  wages  than  the 
latter.  There  is  a  wrong,  an  injustice, 
but  the  law  cannot  interfere.  It  cannot 
force  a  haberdasher  to  pay  ten  dollars 
for  service  which  he  can  secure  for  six. 
Moreover,  the  question  of  female  clerk- 


134  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

ship  is  not  yet  settled.  There  are  con- 
scientious, intelHgent,  and  obhging  shop- 
keepers, who  say  that  female  clerks  are 
not  satisfactory.  Their  strength  is  not 
equal  to  the  draughts  made  upon  it. 
They  are  not  able  to  stand  so  long  as 
clerks  are  required  to  stand.  They  have 
not  the  patience,  the  civility,  the  tact 
that  male  clerks  have.  I  do  not  know 
how  this  is;  I  only  say  these  things  are 
alleged.  I  have  never  noticed  any  espe- 
cial incivility  in  female  clerks,  and  I  see 
no  objection  to  their  sitting  when  they 
have  nothing  to  do.  But  the  persons 
who  hire  are  the  persons  to  require  and 
to  define  service,  and  if  they  do  not 
choose  girls,  or  do  not  value  them  so 
highly  as  boys,  how  can  legislation  help 
it?  All  the  voting  in  the  world  can 
never  add  a  cubit  to  a  woman's  stature. 
Here  also  the  rule  of  quantity  and  qual- 
ity comes  into  play,  and  regulates  wages 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  135 

with  a  high  hand.  So  long  as  ten  girls 
stand  before  the  door  for  every  one  girl 
that  stands  behind  the  counter,  ready 
to  take  the  place  which  she  relinquishes 
for  the  self-same  wages  that  she  disdains, 
there  is  very  little  use  in  talking  3  but 
superior  business  qualifications  are  rec- 
ognized and  rewarded.  Waiting  in  the 
office  of  one  of  our  large  business  es- 
tablishments not  long  since,  I  observed 
a  young  woman  open  the  door  and  report 
a  telegraphic  question  to  the  proprietor. 
He  gave  her  an  oral  answer  to  be  trans- 
mitted by  telegraph,  and  when  she  had 
gone  he  said  to  me :  "  There  is  not  an- 
other person  in  the  house  to  whom  I 
would  trust  a  telegram  unwritten.  She  is 
sure  to  be  accurate.  An  intelligent  wo- 
inan  is  more  intelligent  than  an  intelligent 
man"  I  said :  " How  do  her  wages  com- 
pare with  those  of  a  man  ?  "  "  We  pay 
her  just  as  we  should  pay  a  man." 


136  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

But  teacliing,  whicli  is  admitted  to  be 
a  peculiarly  feminine  employment,  and 
which  under  male  regulations  is  attended 
with  most  flagrant  injustice,  is  chiefly  a 
public  concern.  It  belongs  to  the  State, 
it  is  adjusted  by  the  ballot,  and  its  in- 
justice is  therefore  a  proper  subject  of 
legislative  control.  That  there  is  injus- 
tice it  is  hardly  possible  to  deny.  Not 
only  is  a  ^voman  paid  less  than  a  man 
for  the  same  service,  but  in  a  public 
school  a  woman  will  be  substituted  for  a 
man  on  the  ground  that  she  is  a  better 
teacher ;  her  superiority  to  him  is  recog- 
nized as  the  cause  of  her  appointment 
over  him ;  and  yet  she  will  receive  only 
about  two  thirds  of  his  salary.  A  woman 
teaches  in  a  high  school,  side  by  side  with 
a  man,  and  knows  that  she  does  more  work 
and  better  work  than  he,  and  that  she  is 
acknowledged  to  do  it,  and  yet  receives 
less  than  one  half,  often  not  more  than 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  187 

one  third,  as  much  as  he  receives.  Will 
female  suffrage  remedy  this  ?  If  it  could 
be  changed  by  voting,  would  the  votes  of 
women  change  it  ?  Is  there  any  reason 
to  suppose  that  women  would  be  any 
more  forward  than  men  in  paying  high 
wages  to  a  woman  ?  Are  women,  as  a 
general  thing,  more  ready  than  men  to 
do  justice  to  a  woman?  I  fear  not. 
There  are  women  who  deprecate  this 
state  of  things,  but  there  are  also  men. 
The  mass  of  men  are  willing  it  should  be 
as  it  is,  but  so  are  the  mass  of  women.  I 
think,  if  the  women  of  a  country  village 
were  to  decide  by  vote  whether  the 
schoolmistress  in  summer  should  have  as 
much  a  month  as  the  schoolmaster  in 
winter,  the  money  coming  from  their 
own,  that  is,  their  husbands'  purses,  they 
would  vote,  No,  in  about  the  same  pro- 
portion as  men  now  vote  it.  If  the  wo- 
men in  a  city  ward  were  asked  wheth- 


138  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

er  the  female  assistants  in  their  high 
schools  should  have  as  much  as  the 
male,  they  also  would  largely  answer.  No. 
It  is  partly  because  women  have  not  suf- 
ficient esprit  de  corps  to  stand  up  for 
one  another  to  any  extent.  Women's 
love  of  men  is  so  much  stronger  than 
their  love  of  justice,  that  they  would 
go  wrong  with  men,  rather  than  right, 
against  them.  So  far  as  this  is  the  re- 
sult of  a  false  education,  of  God-is-thy- 
law-thou-mine  teachings,  it  is  to  be  depre- 
cated. So  far  as  it  is  the  natural  arrange- 
ment of  things,  it  is  beneficial.  Certainly 
that  would  be  a  calamitous  cause  which 
should  array  the  two  sexes  against  each 
other.  I  trust  we  shall  never  be  reduced 
to  such  extremities  that  women  must 
band  together  to  extort  justice  from 
men,  as  the  bold  barons  extorted  Magna 
Charta  from  King  John.  It  would,  in 
fact,   be    practically   impossible,   for   the 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  139 

idea  underlying  the  relation  of  the  two 
sexes  is  the  idea  of  unity ;  that  of  indi- 
viduals of  either  sex  is  separation;  and 
this  instinct  of  unity  will  always  keep 
men  and  women  working  with  and  for 
each  other,  though  they  may  often  work 
wrong.  So  much  the  more  reason  is 
there  that  they  should  learn  to  work 
right,  —  that  their  mutual  helpfulness 
should  not  be  perverted  into  mutual  hin- 
drance,—  that  tyranny  on  the  one  side 
and  subserviency  on  the  other  should 
not  usurp  the  moral  support  which  is  due 
to  each  sex  from  the  other.  As  it  is, 
women  have  no  better  friends  than  some 
men,  and  no  worse  foes  than  many  wo- 
men. 

Another  reason  for  supposing  that  fe- 
male suffrage  will  not  change  the  status 
is  that  women  do  not  seem  generally  to 
quarrel  with  the  status.  They  are  just 
as  free  to  speak  their  minds  now  as  they 


140  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

will  be  to  vote  their  minds  by  and  by; 
and  except  from  teachers  and  their  im- 
mediate friends,  I  do  not  recollect  hear- 
ing any  remonstrance  against  the  in- 
equality of  the  wages  of  teachers.  Wo- 
men generally  look  upon  it  with  apparent 
indifference.  It  scarcely  excites  remark, 
and  an  exposition  of  the  v/rong  meets 
only  a  languid  assent.  Even  teachers 
themselves  usually  take  very  little  notice 
of  it.  Girls  accept  summer  schools  and 
summer  wages  without  protest  or  com- 
ment, and  are  only  too  glad  of  them. 
But  few  teachers,  and  those  of  the  high- 
est character,  express  any  dissent. 

What  would  be  the  use  ?  The  State,  like 
any  private  employer,  pays  market  prices 
for  its  work,  and  the  machinery  works  all 
the  more  smoothly  because  people  do  not 
know  the  difference  between  a  good  ar- 
ticle and  a  poor  one.  If  a  clergyman 
preaches  dull  sermons,  or  a  tailor  makes 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  141 

an  ill-fitting  coat,  —  if  a  doctor  loses  pa- 
tients and  a  lawyer  cases,  —  their  sin  finds 
them  out  at  once.  Not  so  with  a  poor 
teacher.  He  may  go  on  in  his  poorness 
for  years,  and  never  be  found  out.  If  a 
teacher  is  popular,  his  employers  are  sat- 
isfied ;  if  he  is  unpopular,  they  are  dis- 
satisfied. The  best  teacher  will  always 
be  liked  by  his  pupils,  but  an  unpopular 
teacher  may  be  vastly  better  than  a  pop- 
ular one.  The  popular  qualities  may  be 
joined  with  vices  of  character  whose  de- 
basing influences  will  go  with  the  pupils 
through  life,  and  the  unpopular  qualities 
may  be  allied  with  sterling  virtues  whose 
effect  will  be  equally  strong  and  durable. 
People  do  not  consider  their  children  of 
so  much  importance  as  what  they  call 
business.  Women'  who  will  not  let  a 
week,  scarcely  a  day,  pass  without  in- 
specting their  kitchens  3  men  who  keep 
every   branch   of    their   business    under 


142  '      WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

their  own  eye,  will  let  their  children 
go  to  school  by  the  year  together  with- 
out any  personal  acquaintance  with  the 
teachers  under  whom  they  are  placed,  or 
any  personal  knowledge  of  the  method 
pursued  in  their  education.  In  what  is 
really  the  most  important  concern  of 
their  lives,  they  trust  entirely  to  others. 
The  co-operation,  even  the  communica- 
tion, between  parents  and  teachers  is 
generally  next  to  nothing. 

As  a  timely  illustration  of  the  con- 
dition of  things,  let  me  state  a  flict  which 
once  came  under  my  observation. 

In  a  New  England  city  somewhat 
famous  for  its  schools,  it  was  publicly 
announced  that  a  professor  of  elocution 
would  give  a  course  of  lectures  to  the 
teachers.  At  the  time  appointed,  a 
goodly  number  of  teachers  were  assem- 
bled; and  a  member  of  the  school  com- 
mittee, a  clergyman,  called  the  meeting 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  143 

to  order,  and  said  to  them,  in  substance  : 
^^We  obtained  Professor  Blank's  services 
to  instruct  the  teachers,  because  we  felt 
you  needed  it.  Could  you  have  heard 
all  that  was  said  by  the  committee  re- 
garding the  reading  in  your  schools,  at 
the  time  this  matter  was  under  con- 
sideration, you  would  not  feel  flattered. 
The  committee  wish  they  had  it  in  their 
power  to  insist  on  the  attendance  of 
every  teacher  at  these  lectures.  As  one 
of  the  grammar  masters  remarked,  if 
any  teacher  does  not  feel  sufficiently  in- 
terested to  attend,  her  place  had  better 
be  filled  by  one  who  does  !  Let  me  say, 
though  we  have  it  not  in  our  power  to 
insist  on  every  one's  attending,  yet  the 
committee  expect  every  teacher  to  at- 
tend, and  if  there  are  those  who  do  not, 
they  will  he  rememhered!" 

I  think  that  the  existence  in  a  com- 
munity of  any  correct  idea  of  the  teach- 


144  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

er's  character,  position,  and  functions 
would  have  prevented  such  a  display  of 
"  plantation  manners."  It  would  make  it 
impossible  for  a  community  to  choose,  as 
the  medium  of  communication  between 
itself  and  its  teachers,  a  man  capable 
of  the  combined  churlishness  and  cow- 
ardice of  this  clergyman.  Or,  if  he 
should  creep  into  office,  it  would  make 
it  impossible  for  him  to  exercise  his  cow- 
ardice and  churlishness  by  singhng  out 
the  female  teachers  for  insult,  while 
adroitly  exonerating  by  implication  the 
male  teachers,  who,  as  it  was  his  busi- 
ness to  know,  are  equally  responsible. 
It  would  shed,  even  through  his  brain, 
some  glimmering  consciousness  that  a 
body  of  teachers  whom  it  was  fit  thus 
to  address  were  persons  totally  unfit  to 
be  intrusted  with  the  education  of  chil- 
dren, and  that  therefore  the  blame 
of  their   shortcomings   would   rest   with 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  145 

the  community  that  employed  them ; 
and  it  would  thus  prevent  a  good  deed 
from  being  barbarously  marred  in  the 
doing. 

If,  then,  a  good  teacher  should  refuse 
anything  less  than  a  man's  salary,  she 
would  simply  be  discarded,  and  a  sub- 
stitute found.  The  substitute  might  be 
inferior,  but  her  employers  would  never 
know  it.  How  can  a  workman,  with 
any  expectation  of  success,  demand  high 
wages  on  the  ground  of  high  work,  when 
his  employer  does  not  know  the  differ- 
ence between  high  work  and  low  ?  More 
than  this,  employers  value  high  work  so 
little  that  they  do  not  even  demand  the 
external  conditions  without  which  high 
work  is  not  to  be  expected.  Public 
opinion  does  not  demand  that  female 
teachers  should  be  educated,  and  in  con- 
sequence a  large  proportion  of  them  are 
uneducated.      That    is,    the    intellectual 

10 


146  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

training  of  children  is  committed  to 
persons  who  are  themselves  almost  en- 
tirely deficient  in  what  would  properly 
be  called  intellectual  training.  If  a  per- 
son is  conversant  with  the  branches  which 
he  is  called  upon  to  teach,  it  is  enough. 
The  effect  upon  mind  and  heart  which 
education  gives  is  not  held  in  estimation. 
A  high-school  teacher  must  know  Latin 
and  mathematics  and  history,  not  because 
he  is  any  broader  and  better  man  for 
the  knowledge,  but  because  he  must 
teach  these  studies.  A  primary-school 
teacher  does  not  teach  them.  So  a  girl 
who  does  not  know  enough  to  enter  as 
pupil  the  lowest  class  of  a  high  school 
may  enter  the  primary  school  as  teacher. 
Parents  are  quite  satisfied  to  intrust  their 
young  children  to  persons  who  earn  no 
more,  and  who  receive  no  more,  than  the 
cook  in  the  kitchen.  That  is,  it  is  con- 
sidered fitting  and  economical  to  consign 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  147 

children  at  the  most  susceptible  age  — 
at  the  age  when  they  are  the  least  influ- 
enced by  books  and  most  by  personal 
contact  with  the  teacher — to  the  care  of 
an  ignorant  and  almost  unknown  person. 
At  the  time  when  the  teacher's  character 
has  the  most  influence,  it  is  considered  of 
the  least  importance ;  while,  when  girls 
and  boys  are  pretty  thoroughly  moulded, 
it  is  thought  necessary  to  employ  teach- 
ers with  some  pretensions  to  learning. 
There  needs  a  difierent  and  a  deeper 
change  than  any  proposed  by  the  ballot. 
It  needs  to  be  understood  that  the  in- 
struction of  children  in  their  early  years 
is  at  least  as  important  and  as  exacting 
as  that  in  their  later  years.  It  needs  to 
be  understood  that  their  early  education 
requires  not  only  as  peculiar  a  fitness,  but 
as  elaborate  a  preparation,  as  their  later 
education.  If  a  woman  has  natural 
skill   and   tact,  she   needs   education   to 


148        ,  WOMAN'S   WEONGS. 

give  weight  to  her  teaching  and  material 
for  her  tact.  Her  work  in  the  primary 
school  exhausts  just  as  much  vital  force, 
makes  just  as  large  a  drain  upon  her 
intellectual  resources,  and  should  receive 
just  as  high  remuneration,  as  work  in 
the  high  school.  To  raise  the  standard 
of  wages,  without  raising  the  standard 
of  qualifications,  would  be  but  prema- 
ture reform.  A  great  many  female  teach- 
ers already  receive  more  than  they  are 
worth.  They  are  not  fit  for  their  places. 
It  is  not  their  fault.  They  are  faithful 
enough,  as  far  as  they  know.  Parents 
employ  them  and  are  content  with  what 
service  they  render ;  but,  compared  with 
what  teachers  ought  to  be  and  to  do, 
they  are  good  for  nothing.  The  same 
is  true  of  men,  —  though  perhaps  not  so 
largely.  The  proportion  of  male  teach- 
ers who  have  received  a  liberal  educa- 
tion is  very   much  larger  than  thai   of 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  149 

female  teachers.  But  if  it  were  smaller, 
it  would  make  no  difference.  That  a 
male  teacher  is  bad,  does  not  make  a 
female  teacher  good.  That  a  man  is  re- 
ceiving ten  times  as  much  as  he  is  worth, 
does  not  make  a  woman  worth  what  she 
receives.  That  a  woman  is  worth  far 
more  than  a  man,  does  not  make  her 
worth  what  she  would  be  if  she  were 
educated.  Let  the  standard  be  raised, 
and  the  number  of  competitors  is  at  once 
diminished,  and  we  are  in  the  line  of 
higher  wages.  But  I  have  no  expecta- 
tion of  any  palpable  or  permanent  rela- 
tive increase  in  the  wages  of  female 
teachers  until  female  resources  are  mul- 
tiplied. When  women  are  able  to  refuse 
low  wages,  they  will  be  offered  high 
wages.  So  long  as  they  are  glad  of  ever 
so  small  remuneration,  they  will  be  sure 
to  get  it.  When  female  teachers  are  so 
good,  so  strong,  so  facile,  so  able  to  turn 


150  WOMAN'S  WEONGS.    - 

their  hands  to  something  else,  that  if 
they  cannot  get  good  wages  for  teaching 
they  will  follow  an  occupation  in  which 
they  can  get  good  wages,  the  work  is 
done.  They  will  need  no  ballot  to  be 
in  demand.  As  it  is,  they  are  at  the 
mercy  of  their  employers.  If  a  girl  is 
ever  so  disgusted  with  her  two  or  three 
hundred  dollars  a  year,  she  does  not 
know  which  way  to  turn  to  get  more. 
She  must  take  what  people  choose  to 
pay ;  and  will  people  ever  choose  to  pay 
more  than  they  are  obliged  to  pay  ? 

The  difference  in  the  number  of  oc- 
cupations pursued  by  men  and  those  pur- 
sued by  women  has  less  practical  effect 
on  women's  wages  than  mere  statistics 
indicate.  The  men  who  are  disposed  of 
by  employments  not  open  or  not  pos- 
sible to  women,  must  be  pretty  well 
matched  by  the  women  who  are  en- 
gaged in  the  employments  which  are  or- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  151 

dinarily  involved  in  marriage^  and  which 
are  equally  shut  to  men.  So  that  the 
number  of  women  and  of  men  left  to 
compete  for  the  employments  common 
to  both  cannot  be  so  very  unequal  -,  and 
their  wages  would  not  naturally  be  very 
dissimilar.  Nor  can  the  existing  dissimi- 
larity be  owing  to  the  greater  number  of 
w^omen  than  of  men  in  the  country,  for 
there  are  by  actual  count  more  men  than 
women.  So  far  as  it  arises  from  an  un- 
equal distribution  of  w^omen,  the  inequal- 
ity may  be  remedied  by  bureaus  of  em- 
ployment, by  individual  energy,  by  pri- 
vate philanthropy,  by  anything  except 
law.  An  error  in  the  calculation  may  be 
that  marriage  does  not  entirely  withdraw 
Avomen  from  the  competitive  employ- 
ments. It  ought  to  do  so.  Every  mar- 
ried w^oman,  especially  every  mother, 
ought  to  be  able  to  devote  her  whole 
working    time    to   her   domestic    duties. 


152  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

The  care  and  labor  of  a  family,  with  or 
without  children,  are  enough  for  any  one 
woman.  Every  married  woman  who,  not 
forced  by  natural  taste  and  aptitude,  but 
by  outward  necessity,  the  res  angiista  do- 
mi,  engages  in  money-earning  occupa- 
tion, is  a  monument  of  her  husband's  in- 
competency, —  always  excepting  illness, 
which  is  incompetency,  indeed,  though 
perhaps  of  the  least  reprehensible  sort. 
Any  person  with  a  just  idea  of  what  is 
due  to  a  family  and  from  a  family  knows 
that  the  family  occupation  is  absorbing 
and  exclusive.  The  danger  indeed  is 
that  it  will  absorb  that  to  which  it  hay 
no  right,  and  exclude  that  which  is  its 
sacred  duty ;  but  in  the  matter  of  em- 
ployment it  bears,  like  the  Turk,  no 
brother  near  the  throne.  Still  I  do  not 
know  that  a  law  could  be  passed  prohib- 
iting married  women  from  binding  shoes, 
or   knitting   sale   stockings,  or   teaching 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  153 

school.  We  must  take  things  as  they 
are^  bending  them  always  towards  the 
right.  As  things  are,  if  women  would 
make  a  wise  choice  of  work,  and  would 
thoroughly  fit  themselves  for  the  posi- 
tions which  they  choose,  I  see  no  reason 
why  they  should  not  materially  mend 
their  condition.  If  the  \vomen  whose 
natural  endowments  fit  them,  and  whose 
natural  taste  leads  them,  to  be  teachers 
would  fortify  their  endowments  by  cor- 
responding acquisitions,  would  correct 
and  cultivate  their  taste  by  a  long 
course  of  intellectual  training,  —  if  the 
women  whose  bent  is  to  book-keeping 
and  business  would  take  pains  to  under- 
stand book-keeping  and  business,  would 
carry  to  them  the  same  attention  and 
devotion  which  men  carry, —  if  the  wo- 
men to  whom  housekeeping  is  of  itself 
no  more  distasteful  than  school-keeping, 
who  w^ould  never  think  of  declining  mar- 


154  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

riage  because  it  involved  housekeeping, 
but  would  rather  look  forward  with  pleas- 
ure to  that  feature  of  it,  —  if  they  would 
put  away  false  pride  and  keep  a  house 
not  their  own,  would  not  a  relief  be  felt 
in  every  part  of  the  social  system? 
When  it  is  found  that  the  women  who 
have  not  the  power  or  the  taste  to  be- 
come trained  and  valued  teachers  have 
become  trained  housewives,  or  skilful 
seamstresses,  or  accomplished  laundresses, 
or  sweetmeat-makers,  or  strawberry-fan- 
ciers, or  counting-room  clerks,  and  the 
supply  of  teachers  is  somewhat  scant, 
there  will  be  no  drawing  back  on  account 
of  a  few  hundred  dollars  more  or  less. 
And  the  laundresses  and  housewives  will 
have  a  less  exhaustive,  a  more  satisfac- 
tory life,  and  a  more  remunerative  occu- 
pation, than  they  had  as  poor  teachers. 
Does  not  this  require  a  change  other 
than  the  ballot  can  accomplish,  —  other 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  155 

indeed  than  the  ballot  proposes  to  accom- 
plish^— but  a  change  entirely  possible  of 
accomplishment  without  the  ballot? 

Meanwhile,  let  the  underpaid  teachers 
console  themselves  with  the  reflection 
that  they  are  doing  the  community  ten 
times  more  harm  by  bad  work  than  the 
community  is  doing  them  by  bad  pay  ! 

What  will  woman's  vote  ^o  to  reform 
our  criminal  code  ?  Everything,  say 
some.  Vice,  if  we  may  trust  these  rosy- 
hued  visions,  is  to  disappear  when  women 
hold  the  ballot.  I  anticipate  no  such 
result.  Vice  is  too  deeply  rooted  in 
men's  hearts  to  be  extirpated  by  any 
such  summary  process.  Crime  is  hard- 
ly repressed  by  legislation;  vice,  never. 
That  attempts  will  be  made  I  do  not 
doubt.  Men  have  made  them  to  some 
extent.  Women,  with  a  moral  sense  more 
keen  in  some  directions,  if  more  obtuse 
from  want  of  cultivation  in  others,  will 


156  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

renew  the  attempt  with  a  more  eager 
effort,  and  doubtless  with  a  temporary 
and  local  success.  The  royal  road  to  a 
desired  object  will  seem  to  be  legis- 
lation, and  legislation  we  shall  have  in 
galore.  But  the  principles  of  human  na- 
ture, which  are  the  principles  of  Divine 
truth,  are  unchangeable,  and  if  we  do  not 
work  in  line  with  them  our  work  will 
come  to  naught.  Every  human  law  not 
founded  on  natural  law  must  sooner  or 
later  fall  to  the  ground.  If  it  is  a  natural 
law  that  no  man  shall  interfere  wdth  his 
fellow  except  to  prevent  his  interference 
with  his  fellows,  a  law  establishing  such 
interference  will  be  both  useless  and 
harmful.  If  moral  ends  can  be  attained 
by  moral  means  alone,  legislative  enact- 
ments will  be  none  the  less  impertinent 
and  invalid  because  they  are  framed  from 
benevolent  motives.  A  knowledge  of 
the  successes  and  failures  of  other  nations 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  157 

and  ages  would  be  of  great  service  to  us 
in  solving  the  problems  of  our  own.  A 
knowledge  of  political  and  social  prin- 
ciples would  do  much  towards  guiding 
our  thinking  into  right  channels.  But 
such  knowledge  is  the  very  last  to  be 
found.  Here  the  principle  of  represen- 
tation is  carried  out  with  marvellous 
fidelity.  The  dense  popular  ignorance, 
not  only  of  the  nature  but  of  the 
existence  of  such  a  science  as  political 
economy,  is  ably  and  fully  represented  in 
every  legislative  assembly.  State  and 
National.  The  result  is  visible  in  laws 
that  perish  with  the  using ;  but  often  not 
till  they  have  spread  derangement  and 
distress  through  every  class  on  which 
they  are  brought  to  bear.  We  try  ex- 
periments on  abandoned  theories,  with  an 
alacrity  and  a  confidence  which  imply  a 
most  touching  ignorance  of  the  fact  that 
some   points  are    settled.      It   is   hardly 


158  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

probable  that  women  are  any  better 
qualified  for  legislation  than  men.  As 
they  have  never  been  held  to  public 
responsibility  for  their  opinions,  they 
have  perhaps  taken  less  trouble  to  form 
correct  ones;  as  there  has  always  been 
in  the  inferior  male  mind  a  certain  re- 
pugnance to  the  possession  by  women 
of  any  political  knowledge,  and  therefore 
a  certain  odium  attached  to  such  posses- 
sion, it  may  well  be  that  women  are  at 
present  even  less  fitted  to  legislate  wisely 
than  many  men.  More  unfit  than  many 
men  they  cannot  be,  for  multitudes  ap- 
pear to  have  no  single  qualification  to 
insure  wise  legislative  action.  From  the 
access  of  women  to  the  ballot-box,  there- 
fore, we  may  look  for  a  sword  before 
peace. 

Nothing  need  be  feared  from  this.  It 
is  natural  that  woman  should  have  part 
in  government,  and  therefore  the  conse- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  159 

quence  must  be  good.  Moreover,  if  the 
ballot  ever  educates,  it  will  educate 
women.  If  women  are  not  far  enough 
advanced  to  be  improved  by  it,  who  is  ? 
But  though  it  will  be  better  in  the  end, 
because  it  is  the  only  rational  way  of 
doing  things,  at  first  we  shall  have  rath- 
er more  crude  law-making,  rather  more 
legislative  journey-work,  than  we  have 
now.  Women  will  attempt  to  sweep 
away  vice  with  the  besom  of  law,  and 
with  apparent  success.  But  a  reaction 
will  follow,  and  into  the  empty,  swept, 
and  garnished  house  will  enter  seven 
devils  more  wicked  than  the  first.  Then 
the  evil  will  correct  itself,  and  so  the 
pendulum  will  swing  back  and  forth,  till 
the  united  trials  of  men  and  women  will, 
we  hope,  teach  them  that  the  motives 
and  the  character  of  law-makers  will  not 
give  efficiency  to  that  law  which  is  not 
founded  on  the  eternal  principles  of  na- 


160  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

ture  and  truth.  Men  and  women  to- 
gether will  be  slow  to  learn  it,  but 
they  will  learn  it  a  little  faster  than 
either  would  alone.  Now  it  is  easy  to 
charge  every  deviation  of  the  ship  from 
her  course  to  the  want  of  a  womanly 
hand  at  the  helm;  but  when  the  wo- 
manly hand  is  there,  and  we  see  the  ship 
still  veering  from  her  track,  we  shall 
begin  to  believe  that  the  trouble  lies 
elsewhere  as  w^ell,  and  enter  upon  an 
honest  and  earnest  search  for  its  cause. 
I  do  not  mean  that  with  woman's  vote 
we  shall  do  any  worse  than  we  do  now. 
We  must,  at  least  after  a  while,  do  better. 
But  we  shall  do  so  little  better,  and  that 
little  so  slowly,  that  long-time  opponents 
of  female  suffrage  will  wag  their  heads 
and  cry.  Aha!  Aha!  and  imagine  that 
they  have  fully  established  their  reputa- 
tion for  superior,  far-sighted  wisdom. 
This  is  of  small  account.     The  fact  will 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  161 

remain  that  the  one  bone  of  contention, 
the  one  root  of  bitterness  between  man 
and  woman,  will  be  removed.  This  of 
itself,  even  if  no  principle  of  justice  were 
involved,  might  seem  enough  to  warrant 
the  extension  of  the  suffrage  to  woman, 
and  is  a  result  to  be  counted  on  with 
more  certainty  than  any  immediate  im- 
provement of  the  laws.  If  men  believe 
as  firmly  as  they  profess  to  believe  that 
they  are  doing  the  best  which  can  be 
done,  I  should  think  they  would,  like  the 
unjust  steward,  make  friends  of  the  mam- 
mon of  unrighteousness,  and  say  to  wo- 
men :  "  You  fancy  you  can  do  so  much 
better  than  we.  Just  try  it.  Take  the 
ballot  and  convert  the  world  at  once  to 
goodness  and  justice."  So  long  as  women 
have  not  the  ballot,  they  will  fondly 
picture  the  things  which  they  might 
accomplish  with  it.    Give  them  the  ballot, 

that  they  may  see  for  themselves  how 
11 


162  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

little  it  can  do.  Give  them  the  ballot, 
that  they  may  have  all  the  power  there 
is,  and  learn  its  weakness.  Give  them 
the  ballot,  that  we  may  have  decided 
what  is  the  nature  of  woman,  and  so 
reconcile  or  destroy  all  conflicting  theo- 
ries of  woman's  sphere,  and  learn  once 
for  all  by  her  success  or  failure  what 
purpose  her  Maker  had  in  her  creation. 
This  we  certainly  never  can  learn  so  long 
as  w^oman  either  is,  or  believes  herself 
to  be,  held  back  by  unjust  restrictions. 

Somewhat  as  President  Buchanan 
maintained  that  the  South  had  no  right 
to  go  out  of  the  Union,  and  the  North 
had  no  right  to  hinder  it ;  so,  as  a  wo- 
man I  would  never  ask  the  ballot,  and 
as  a  man  I  would  never  refuse  it. 

Female  suffrage  appears  to  be  a  fore- 
gone conclusion;  it  remains  for  us  to 
prevent  it  so  far  as  possible  from  being  a 
conclusion  in  which  nothing  is  concluded. 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  163 

Eight  or  wrong,  England  and  America 
seem  tending  towards  universal  suffrage, 
and  in  fact,  as  in  terms,  universal  suf- 
frage must  include  female  suffrage.  Not 
attempting  or  desiring  to  interfere  with 
those  who  would  hasten  our  steps,  I  feel 
more  concerned  that  there  should  be 
preparation  for  it.  To  me,  female  suf- 
frage, in  the  form  in  which  it  is  pro- 
posed, shares  with  universal  suffrage, 
though  in  a  less  degree,  the  character 
of  an  experiment  whose  result  is  doubt- 
ful. Manhood  suffrage  has  a  noble  ring 
to  it.  But  its  warmest  advocates  do  not 
mean  precisely  what  they  say.  No  suf- 
frage is  meant  to  be  absolutely  universal, 
absolutely  unrestricted.  Lunatics  are  de- 
nied it,  notwithstanding  that  the  point 
where  sanity  ends  and  insanity  begins  is 
often  indeterminable.  Foreigners  are  de- 
nied it,  though  no  one  questions  that 
Count  Gasparin,  on  his  arrival  in  Amer- 


164  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

ica,  would  know  more  of  our  political 
philosophy,  our  practical  tendency,  and 
national  needs,  than  an  ordinary  Irish  la- 
borer after  a  five  years'  residence.  Mi- 
nors are  denied  it,  but  many  a  lad  of 
eighteen  or  fifteen,  and  not  a  few  of 
twelve  years,  understand  the  issues  bet- 
ter, and  are  far  more  able  to  vote  intel- 
ligently, than  many  of  our  naturalized 
citizens.  Strictly  speaking,  then,  no  one 
advocates  universal  suffrage.  All  are  in 
favor  of  limitations,  and  limitations  which 
must  often  be  in  their  operations  some- 
what arbitrary,  though  they  are  meant  to 
follow,  and  do  largely  follow,  the  great 
natural  lines  of  distinction.  There  is 
therefore  nothing  unnatural,  nothing  in- 
consistent, nothing  unrepublican,  in  an 
endeavor  to  restrict  still  further  the  suf- 
frage. If  society  has  the  right  to  make 
one  restriction,  it  has  the  same  abstract 
right   to   make   another.     If  it   has   the 


WOMAN'S   WRONGS.  165 

right  to  say  that  men  may  vote  at 
twenty-one,  but  may  not  vote  at  twenty, 
because  it  is  judged  that  twenty-one  is 
on  an  average  the  earhest  age  at  which 
we  may  expect  discretion,  it  is  not  in- 
herently unreasonable  and  repugnant  to 
common  sense  and  human  nature  to  say 
that  a  man  shall  not  vote  at  twenty-one 
unless  he  can  read  and  write.  The  right 
and  the  wrong  of  it  depend  upon  the 
nature,  not  upon  the  fact,  of  the  restric- 
tion. Nor  does  there  seem  to  be  any 
reason  why  restrictions  upon  the  suffrage 
should  be  of  such  a  nature  that  mere 
lapse  of  time,  without  any  regard  to 
character,  shall  be  sufficient  to  remove 
them.  I  should  be  glad  to  see  a  man 
required  to  give  some  proof  of  ability 
before  he  is  allowed  to  control  society. 
For  the  ballot  does  not  mean  simply 
self-government;  it  is  also  government 
of  others.     The  vote  of  New  York  is  not 


166  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

confined  to  regulating  New  York  inter- 
ests. It  sends  John  Morrissey  to  Con- 
gress to  make  laws  for  the  nation,  and 
may  send  him  to  the  Court  of  Saint 
James  to  represent  the  nation.  The 
same  authority  which  has  a  right  to  say 
that  a  man  who  has  been  in  State  prison 
for  crime  shall  not  exercise  over  others 
the  lordship  of  voting  has  a  right  to  say 
that  a  man  who  has  not  taken  the  trouble 
to  learn  to  read  the  law  which  forbids 
crime  and  prescribes  its  penalty  shall  not 
exercise  such  lordship.  Surely  in  a  coun- 
try like  ours  inability  to  read  and  write 
is  as  strong  presumptive  evidence  of  in- 
competency to  exercise  the  right  of  suf- 
frage as  the  fact  of  being  only  twenty 
years  old.  I  should  be  glad  to  go  further, 
and  not  only  have  the  standard  of  quali- 
fication higher,  but,  notwithstanding  the 
antiquity  of  the  idea,  make  the  possession 
of  the  ballot  contingent  upon  the  posses- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  167 

sion  of  property.  Property  suffrage  has 
indeed  an  aristocratic  and  odious  sound, 
—  beside  manhood  suffrage  a  mere  mate- 
rialistic tinkle ;  but  government  itself  we 
want  chiefly  for  materialistic  purposes, 
chiefly  to  keep  men  from  preying  upon 
one  another,  and  so  give  ample  room  for 
all  idealism  and  all  excellence  to  flourish. 
Government  deals  very  largely  with  prop- 
erty interests,  and  it  seems  as  if  those 
who  earn  and  dispense  property  are  the 
ones  to  understand  best  the  laws  which 
'control  it.  He  who  cannot  manage  it 
for  himself  is  hardly  the  one  to  manage 
it  for  other  people.  The  aristocracy  of 
property  suffrage  may  be  a  very  demo- 
cratic aristocracy.  In  our  country  the 
race  is  open  to  all.  The  competitors,  as 
a  general  thing,  carry  only  such  weights 
as  nature  imposes.  The  goal  is  acknowl- 
edged to  be  fitting,  and  the  laurels 
worth  the  wearing.     Hence  there  seems 


168  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

to  be  no  more  generally  accurate  sign 
of  wisdom,  thrift,  practical  ability,  than 
success  here.  Undoubtedly  there  are 
exceptions,  but  no  more  than  there  are 
to  the  other  rules.  The  standard  need 
not  be  high.  We  do  not  want  a  rich 
man's  government,  but  we  do  want  a 
wise,  a  judicious,  a  responsible  man's 
government ;  and  nothing  contributes 
more  to  this  than  the  possession  of  prop- 
erty which  depends  for  its  value  chiefly 
upon  the  nature  of  the  government.  The 
poor  man's  fifties  or  hundreds  at  stake 
make  him  as  careful,  as  conservative,  as 
interested,  as  the  rich  man's  thousands. 
He  will  be  just  as  alert  against  foolish 
expenditure,  just  as  restless  under  oppres- 
sive taxes.  Certainly  let  the  ballot  be 
put  within  reach  of  every  industrious 
person  in  any  calling  of  life ;  let  the  con- 
dition of  suffrage  be  such  that  a  non-ful- 
filment of  the  condition  is  presumptive 


WOMAN'S  WKONGS.  169 

evidence  of  incapacity  to  exercise  the 
right.  Who  shall  fix  the  standard  ?  The 
same  authority  that  fixes  it  now.  The 
authority  that  grants  to  every  tatterde- 
malion the  right  to  vote  because  he  is 
twenty-one  years  old  may  forbid  the 
man  of  twenty-one  years  to  vote  because 
he  is  a  tatterdemalion.  The  indiscrimi- 
nate bestowal  of  the  ballot  makes  the 
ballot  common  and  unclean.  A  restric- 
tion of  age  alone  ofiers  no  stimulus  to 
improvement.  A  restriction  of  sex  or 
color  is  a  barrier  to  improvement.  No 
incapacity  retains  the  one  restriction ;  no 
capacity  removes  the  other.  I  would 
have  the  ballot  made  a  noble  and  desir- 
able possession,  a  sign  of  sagacity,  of 
ability,  of  worth',  something  to  be  striven 
for,  a  guerdon  as  well  as  a  power.  And 
when  it  is  thus  ennobled,  let  it  be  open 
to  all  who  can  fulfil  the  conditions, — 
men  and  women,  black  and  w^hite. 


170  WOMAN'S   WEONGS. 

I  think  men  do  not  dream  how  aggra- 
vated is  the  affront  they  put  upon  wo- 
men in  some  of  the  arguments  about 
voting  which  they  employ.  I  do  not 
mean  such  men  as  Dr.  Todd  alone,  who 
cannot  open  their  mouths  but  to  exasper- 
ate ;  but  men  who  really  know  in  many 
respects  what  they  are  talking  about,  who 
are  capable  of  speaking  on  the  subject 
with  candor  and  moderation,  and  not 
without  sense,  but  who  are  unhappily  not 
incapable  of  using  arguments  utterly 
beneath  the  dignity  of  man  or  woman, 
—  arguments  which,  employed  towards 
themselves,  they  would  be  the  first  to 
resent,  and  whose  fallacy,  employed  on 
any  other  theme,  they  would  swiftly 
detect  and  denounce.  I  mean  such  re- 
sponses, to  the  women  who  claim  right  of 
suffrage,  as  that  women  have  plenty  to 
do  at  home  without  asking  office ;  that 
they  had  better  do  their  own  work  well, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  171 

before  they  ask  to  do  men's ;  that  if  they 
would  teach  poor  women  and  their  own 
daughters  to  sew  well  and  to  cook  well, 
they  would  have  a  sufficiently  broad  field 
for  the  exercise  of  their  philanthropy  and 
all  their  powers,  and  would  do  far  more 
good  to  the  country  than  by  voting ; 
that  if  they  persist  in  demanding  their 
rights  so  strenuously,  they  may  get  more 
rights  than  they  want,  —  the  right  to 
stand  in  cars  and  to  take  outside  seats 
on  coaches.  These  are  the  arguments  of 
savages,  and  fit  to  be  addressed  to  sav- 
ages, but  they  are  unworthy  of  civilized 
people.  To  attempt  to  deter  women  from 
claiming  what  belongs  to  them  by  threat- 
ening to  withhold  something  which  does 
not  belong  to  them,  is  child's  play,  and 
very  small  and  mean  play  at  that.  To 
ask  women  to  relinquish  a  right  and  a 
duty  in  exchange  for  a  courtesy,  is  to 
ask  them  to  do  what  is  dishonorable.     If 


172  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

voting  be  a  right,  yield  it;  if  it  be  not 
a  right,  withhold  it ;  but  to  acknowledge 
the  right,  and  attempt  to  scare  off  or  buy 
off  the  claimant,  is  a  process  not  adapted 
to  excite  respect  for  the  masculine  char- 
acter or  confidence  in  the  masculine  wis- 
dom. 

If  a  man,  robbed  of  his  purse  by  a 
highwayman,  or  kept  out  of  his  rightful 
inheritance  by  an  unscrupulous  kinsman, 
should  seek  justice  from  the  law,  how 
would  he  like  to  be  bidden  by  the  judge, 
^'  Go  home  to  your  farm  and  your  plough; 
there  you  will  find  enough  to  do.  You 
will  get  far  more  money  and  respect  by 
teaching  your  boys  how  to  plant  and  hoe 
than  you  ever  can  by  prosecuting  law- 
suits ! "  Nor  would  it  tend  to  soothe  his 
feelings  that  the  judge  were  himself  the 
highwayman.  "  I  want  justice,"  he  would 
say,  "not  advice.  Your  suggestions  are 
impertinent.     Cease  to  wrong  me  before 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  173 

you  dare  counsel  me."  So  may  the  wo- 
men who  claim  rights  say  to  the  men  who 
withhold  them  and  counsel  duties.  This 
is  not  argument ;  it  is  insult.  There  can 
be  no  more  brazen  effrontery  than  for 
men  to  attempt  to  dictate  to  women 
their  sphere.  It  is  an  assumption  of  Di- 
vine prerogative  which  can  excite  only 
anger  and  bitterness.  It  is  this  unwar- 
ranted and  contemptuous  dictation  which 
gives  to  the  woman's-rights  struggle  its 
animosity  and  repulsiveness.  Women 
kept  back  from  what  they  believe  to  be 
their  own,  from  what  they  can  show  as 
good  a  title  to  as  any  man,  are  told  to  go 
home  and  do  housework.  All  that  there 
is  of  spirit  in  a  woman  rises  up  in  de- 
fiance. What  right  have  men  to  assume 
such  judgeship  ?  Who  made  them  inter- 
preter between  God  and  woman  ?  Her 
duty,  her  sphere,  lies  between  herself 
and  her  Maker.     What  she  can  do,  and 


174  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

what  she  chooses  to  do,  she  has  a  Divine 
right  to  do,  subject  only  to  Divine  Hmita- 
tions.  She  is  no  more  under  bonds  to 
do  housework  than  is  a  man.  If  she 
chooses  and  has  the  ability  to  get  her 
living  in  some  other  way,  she  has  the 
same  right  to  do  it  that  a  man  has. 
A  popular  lecturer  not  long  since  de- 
clared that  Anna  Dickinson  could  make 
as  good  a  loaf  of  bread  as  any  one, 
and  that  there  was  nowhere  a  better- 
ordered  cottage  than  that  over  which 
Lucy  Stone  presided.  His  motives  were 
good,  and  his  statements  may  have  been 
adapted  to  the  hardness  of  his  hearers' 
hearts,  but  he  should  never  have  conde- 
scended to  make  them.  It  was  coming 
down  from  the  true  position  to  pander 
to  a  false  principle.  So  far  as  lecturer 
or  audience  was  concerned,  judging  from 
the  newspaper  report  of  the  lecture,  it 
is   no   more   Anna   Dickinson's   duty   to 


WOMAN'S  WEONGS.  175 

know  how  to  make  bread  than  it  is  Caleb 
Cushing's.  Whether  Anna  Dickinson  can 
make  bread,  or  Lucy  Stone  keep  house, 
is  the  affair  only  of  those  persons  for 
whom  it  is  the  duty  of  the  one  to  make 
bread  and  of  the  other  to  keep  house. 
If  Anna  Dickinson  chooses  to  deliver 
lectures,  and  buy  bread  with  the  proceeds 
instead  of  making  it, — if  Lucy  Stone  and 
her  husband  choose  that  she  shall  deliver 
lectures  and  hire  a  pair  of  hands  to  keep 
their  house, — it  is  altogether  fitting  and 
proper.  It  is  a  thousand  times  more  fit- 
ting and  proper  a  way  of  keeping  house 
than  the  way  which  men  not  unfrequent- 
ly  adopt,  and  without  rebuke,  —  namely, 
marrying  for  it.  Let  us  see  every  man 
bound  down  to  one  specific  trade  before 
we  attempt  to  bind  woman.  Let  us  see 
every  boy  constrained  to  raise  wheat  to 
make  bread  with,  before  we  constrain 
every  girl  to  make  bread. 


176  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

^^The  education  of  girls  now-a-days  is 
extremely  absurd,"  an  honorable  gentle- 
man is  reported  in  the  morning  paper  to 
have  said  at  a  meeting  of  the  Social  Sci- 
ence Association.  '^  There  is  no  sense  in 
having  girls  study  Greek  and  Latin  when 
they  cannot  make  good  bread,  pies,  or 
puddings";  and  every  girl  of  character 
and  individuality  who  read  his  words 
vowed  in  her  heart  eternal  hostility  to 
the  making  of  bread,  pies,  and  puddings, 
—  a  vow  which  she  will  faithfully  keep 
till  some  strong  influence  comes  upon 
her,  and  makes  the  distasteful  w^ork 
pleasant.  But  meanwhile  the  contempt- 
uous words  have  borne  fruit  of  indigna- 
tion and  disdain  towards  the  speaker, 
when  there  might  have  been  respect  and 
docility.  Why  will  men  destroy  the  ad- 
vantage which  their  education,  their  posi- 
tion, and  their  sex  give  them,  by  these 
foolish   words?     Why   will    they   be   so 


WOMAN'S  WEONGS.  177 

blind  as  not  to  see  where  the  true 
mischief  and  danger  lie?  Why  do  not 
men  say  to  women,  and  to  those  about 
to  become  women,  what  they  might  say 
with  tenfold  more  effect  than  any  wo- 
man's words  would  have, — why  do  they 
not  say,  instead  of  those  debasing  sen- 
sual teachings  which  make  woman  a  mere 
waiter  upon  the  gross  necessities  of  man, 
and  which  are  only  more  disastrous 
when  they  are  accepted  than  when  they 
are  rejected, — why  do  they  not  say,  "Be 
content  to  strive  for  nothing  less  than  all 
which  a  woman  may  become.  Cease  to 
think  that  pettiness  and  frivolity  and 
insipidity  are  feminine  accomplishments. 
Cease  to  think  it  a  beautiful,  a  grace- 
ful, a  womanly  thing  to  be  a  fool. 
Strengthen  the  mind  by  study  and  the 
body  by  exercise.  Store  your  memory 
with  facts,  and  cultivate  your  judgment 
by  reasoning.     Fit  yourself  for  the  place 

12 


178  WOMAN'S   WRONGS. 

which  you  select  or  accept.  Be  wife, 
mother,  teacher,  nurse,  what  you  will,  but 
be  your  best;  and  be  always  a  wo- 
man first;  be  always  higher  than  your 
work.  Eemember  always  that  you  must 
be  before  you  can  do.  Scorn  to  con- 
tract your  powers  to  the  narrow  circle 
of  your  personal  contact,  but  compre- 
hend with  your  interest  all  that  touches 
welfare.  Consider  nothing  human  as  for- 
eign to  you.  Make  home,  so  far  as  you 
have  or  can  have  power,  a  centre  of 
comfort  indeed,  but  of  light,  of  intelli- 
gence, of  humanity  as  well,  and  count 
the  whole  country  your  home,  and  the 
whole  world  your  country.  Disdain  to 
affect  or  to  cherish  an  ignorant  inno- 
cence, but  wear  an  aggressive  and  all- 
conquering  purity.  Eemember  that  the 
perfect  woman  is  nobly  planned,  not 
only  to  warn  and  comfort,  but  to  com- 
mand.    Learn   to    think   nobly,   to   love 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  179 

nobly,  to  live  nobly,  and  demand  and 
enforce  by  your  own  nobility,  from  all 
who  seek  your  friendship  or  compan- 
ionship, the  same  outreach  for  noble 
thought  and  love  and  life." 

Do  men  fancy  that  the  sceptre  will 
depart  from  them  when  women  become 
sovereigns?  So  long  as  women  remain 
subjects,  the  sceptre  crumbles  in  man's 
grasp,  and  his  kingdom  runs  to  waste. 
It  is  not  women  alone  who  suffer  from 
the  ignorance  and  inability,  not  to  say 
imbecility,  which  have  been  sedulously 
inculcated  upon  woman  as  a  grace  and  a 
charm.  Men  come  down  to  meet  their 
women.  It  is  wellnigh  impossible  for  a 
man  to  live  high  when  the  women  of  his 
household  and  his  acquaintance  are  con- 
stantly attracting  him  to  live  low.  When 
women  drivel,  men  grovel.  If  men  really 
feel  that  they  are  too  mean  and  feeble 
and  false  to  retain  their  influence  over 


180  WOMAN'S  WRONGS.      ' 

women,  when  women  shall  be  encour- 
aged to  a  free  and  full  development, 
there  is  a  sort  of  wisdom  in  their  small- 
talk  of  bread  and  butter.  Happily  there 
are  men  who  have  sufficient  self-respect 
to  look,  not  only  without  dismay,  but 
with  lively  satisfaction,  upon  every  sign 
of  improvement  in  the  character  and 
education  of  women;  who  feel  neither 
gratified  nor  conciliated  to  hear  a  woman 
declare  that  she  cares  nothing  about  pol- 
itics and  has  all  the  rights  she  wants; 
men  who  are  not  deceived  by  the  senti- 
mentalisms  of  a  threadbare  chivalry,  but 
who  see  and  say  that  the  influence  of  a 
large-natured  woman  is  elevating,  and 
the  influence  of  a  small-natured  woman 
is  degrading. 

Breadth  and  depth  of  culture  are  the 
only  royal  road  even  to  good  house- 
keeping. Granted  that  the  majority  of 
women  do  lead  a  dumcstic  life,  and  should 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  181 

therefore  be  educated  with  reference  to 
it ;  there  is  no  employment  in  the  world 
that  needs  Greek  and  Latin  more  than 
domestic  employment.  The  position  of 
a  woman  at  the  head  of  a  family  is 
more  like  that  of  a  man  at  the  head  of 
a  government  than  like  any  other.  Ev- 
ery possible  variety  of  mental  training 
sh^  needs;  every  possible  variety  of  in- 
tellectual furnishing  will  come  into  use. 
Without  the  liberality,  the  comprehen- 
sivenesSj  the  wisdom,  which  education 
gives,  she  cannot  administer  the  affairs  of 
her  kingdom  well.  Natural  tact  will  do 
much,  but  it  cannot  supply  the  place  of 
education.  When  a  woman  has  learned 
to  make  a  pudding,  she  has  learned  but 
the  smallest  and  easiest  part  of  her  duty. 
She  needs  to  know  how  to  sit  at  the 
table  where  the  pudding  is  served,  and 
dispense  a  hospitality  so  cordial  and  en- 
livening that   the   pudding  shall  be  for- 


182  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

gotten.  There  are  a  thousand  women 
who  can  make  a  pudding,  where  there 
is  one  who  is  mistress  of  her  servants, 
of  her  children,  of  her  husband,  of  her 
house,  of  her  position.  Granted  that 
women  need  have  no  character  on  their 
own  account, — that  their  glory  and  dig- 
nity and  importance  lie  in  being  the 
mothers  of  men.  All  on  that  ground 
they  need  the  most  thorough  intellect- 
ual education.  A  woman  can  make  a 
dress  fit  well  though  she  have  little 
knowledge  of  anything  else;  but  she 
cannot  fashion  an  immortal  soul  for  a 
worthy  immortality  without  a  worthy  cul- 
tivation of  her  own  soul.  A  woman  who 
is  not  the  equal  of  men  is  not  fit  to  be 
the  mother  of  men. 

Let  me  not,  however,  miss  an  oppor- 
tunity, or  anything  that  may  be  con- 
strued into  an  opportunity,  to  repudiate 
this  whole   doctrine.     A  woman   should 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  183 

be  strong  and  wise  and  cultivated^  not 
chiefly  because  she  becomes  thereby  a 
better  wife  and  mother,  but  because  wis- 
dom is  better  than  folly,  strength  than 
weakness,  cultivation  than  neglect.  A 
woman's  glory  is  in  herself  If  she  is 
wise,  she  is  wise  for  herself  It  is  just  as 
great  for  her  to  do  a  great  thing  herself 
as  it  is  to  have  her  husband  or  son  do  it, 
and  husband  and  son  are  all  the  more 
likely  to  be  great  for  her  grandeur.  But 
what  with  pulpit  and  press,  lecture-room 
and  social  science,  the  theory  that  wo- 
man is  but  a  mere  auxiliary  of  man 
seems  to  be  reviving  with  great  force. 
The  Mohammedan  and  the  Mormon  doc- 
trines are  that  women  have  no  life  in 
the  next  world  except  through  their  hus- 
bands. The  Christian  doctrine  is  that 
they  have  none  in  this.  "  Man,"  says  a 
popular  lecturer,  "  needs  the  conscious 
affection  of  a  female  heart  to  soften  the 


184  WOMAN'S  WEONGS. 

asperities  of  his  own,  and  to  give  com- 
pleteness to  his  being."  But  what  of  the 
female  heart  while  it  is  thus  softening  his 
asperities  and  completing  his  being  ?  Is 
asperity-softening  a  pleasant  w^ork  ?  Will 
it  be  likely  to  give  completeness  to  the 
female  being?  or  is  she  supposed  to  be 
already  complete  ?  "In  order  to  found  a 
home/'  says  the  same  lecturer,  according 
to  the  newspaper  report,  "  the  first  thing 
to  do  is  to  look  around  for  a  woman  who 
would  make  a  good  partner  in  this  home 
business,  —  a  woman  pure,  good,  sensi- 
ble, modest,  tidy,  good-looking,  and  intel- 
ligent." I  should  say,  decidedly  the  first 
thing  for  him  is  to  take  a  good  long  look 
at  himself,  and  make  sure  that  he  is  pure, 
good,  sensible,  modest,  tidy,  good-looking, 
and  intelligent,  and  therefore  a  fit  person 
for  a  woman  of  such  qualities  to  associate 
with.  "Her  support,  her  dignity,  her 
beauty,  her  honor  and  happiness,  lie  in 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  185 

her    dependence    as    wife,   mother,    and 

daughter The  woman  who,  at  this 

day,  feels  that  to  be  the  mother  of  hving 
children  is  the  first,  highest  .  .  .  .  lot,  is 
worthy  of  all  admiration  and  praise." 
What  gospel  is  this?  Honor  and  digni- 
ty and  happiness  consist  not  in  truth,  in- 
tegrity, self-sacrifice,  self-command,  benev- 
olence, communion  with  God,  and  likeness 
to  Christ,  but  in  marriage  and  moth- 
erhood and  housekeeping!  Where  is 
the  warrant  for  such  affirmations?  Not 
surely  in  the  words  of  the  Master.  Christ 
propounded  no  such  doctrines.  He  had 
many  and  devoted  friends  among  women. 
He  spoke  to  women  and  of  women  in 
public  and  private.  He  gave  them  in- 
struction, advice,  and  consolation.  His 
tenderness  towards  them  was  so  manly, 
so  divine,  that  even  now,  dimly  seen 
through  lengthening  years,  imperfectly 
told  in  a   strange   tongue,  it  falls  upon 


186  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

the  heart  like  dew ;  but  never  a  word 
he  spake  that  the  most  perverse  ingenui- 
ty could  wTest  to  the  support  of  this  un- 
regenerate  theory.  He  never  so  branded 
woman  with  the  mark  of  the  beast.  So 
far  as  his  words  have  any  bearing  upon 
it,  they  bear  against  it.  He  looked  upon 
woman,  he  treated  woman,  as  a  human 
being.  Nothing  that  he  ever  said  could 
be  construed  into  a  concession  of  her 
inferiority  to  man.  He  gave  her  equal 
respect,  less  rebuke.  His  denunciations 
of  men  were  sometimes  terrible.  He 
never  spoke  a  harsh  word  to  a  woman. 
Paul,  in  the  glow  of  inspiration,  uttering 
truths  which  span  the  w^hole  heaven  of 
the  soul,  nevertheless  sometimes  showed 
in  his  teachings  the  influence  of  his  age. 
Christ  shone,  mildly  to  meet  our  dark- 
ened eyes,  above  all  ages.  Paul  could 
never  quite  get  out  of  his  mind  the  no- 
tion of  woman's  sphere.     Into  the  mind 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  187 

of  Christ  it  never  came.  Paul  admon- 
ished women  to  guide  the  house.  Jesus 
applauded  a  woman  for  not  guiding  the 
house.  All  his  intercourse  with  woman 
was  adapted  to  lift  her  up  from  the 
level  where  she  stood  into  a  higher  re- 
gion,—  to  take  her  above  the  wearying, 
petty  cares  of  "her  sphere,"  and  fix  her 
thoughts  on  higher  themes,  —  themes 
that  expand  the  mind  and  enlarge  the 
heart.  It  was  not  Martha,  cumbered 
with  much  serving,  but  Mary,  who  left 
her  house  to  look  after  itself  while  she 
sat  at  Jesus'  feet,  who  received  his  com- 
mendation. Martha  is  the  model  woman 
of  men,  but  Jesus  praised  Mary.  Men 
at  different  times  brought  accusations 
against  women,  but  Jesus  always  main- 
tained their  cause.  Even  w^hen  they  were 
palpably  and  grievously  wrong,  he  shield- 
ed their  guilt  with  his  own  purity,  and 
couched  his  censure  in  such  gentleness 


188  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

that  displeasure  is  swallowed  up  in  love. 
0;  never  man  spake  like  this  man! 

I  wish  our  grave  and  reverend  teach- 
ers could  know  how  deep,  how  thorough, 
how  abiding  is  the  repugnance  felt  by 
every  woman  not  debased  by  corrupt 
male  influence  towards  those  who,  in- 
stead of  teaching  men  to  be  so  pure  and 
high-minded  as  to  be  worthy  of  becom- 
ing husbands  and  fathers,  spend  their 
strength  in  inculcating  upon  women  the 
duty  of  becoming  wives  and  mothers, 
enforcing  that  by  argument  which  should 
only  be  won  by  grace,  degrading  into 
a  means  of  coarse  material  prosperity 
that  which  is  meant  to  minister  the 
finest  spiritual  succor,  till  all  the  sacra- 
ments of  life  seem  likely  to  be  swept 
away. 

How  long  shall  men  attempt  to  steady 
the  ark  of  the  Lord  by  putting  forth 
upon  it  their  own  unconsecrated  hands? 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  189 

How  many  generations  must  die  before 
we  learn  that  the  Lord  is  in  his  holy 
temple,  and  that  the  only  fitting  wor- 
ship is  for  all  the  earth  to  keep  silence 
before  him?  Whenever  there  are  con- 
fusion and  disaster,  it  is  because  the  peo- 
ple have  gone  aside  after  Baalim  and 
Ashtaroth.  The  gospel  of  material  pros- 
perity is  very  little  higher  than  no  gos- 
pel at  all.  It  never  can  heal  the  hurt 
of  the  daughter  of  my  people. 

How  swiftly,  harmoniously,  and  com- 
pletely, during  the  late  war,  did  the  rela- 
tions between  men  and  women  adjust 
themselves !  The  whole  country  was 
flooded  with  a  sudden  outburst  of  love, 
—  love  of  country,  of  freedom,  and  of 
right.  There  was  no  quarrelling  as  to 
who  was  head  and  who  was  heart.  In- 
stinctively, head  and  heart  worked  togeth- 
er. In  the  Sanitary  Commission  rooms, 
in    the    hospitals,   in   camps,   on    battle- 


190  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

fields,  at  the  mammoth  fairs,  men  and 
women  wrought  side  by  side,  the  great 
hearts  of  both  sexes  bearing  down  all  the 
clamors  of  incompetence,  and  petty,  brief 
authority,  and  never  clashing  with  each 
other.  Men  and  women  ordered,  organ- 
ized, and  obeyed,  as  instinct  and  fitness 
prompted.  Their  "  spheres  "  cut  across 
one  another  without  the  slightest  regard 
to,  or  the  smallest  hindrance  from,  tradi- 
tion. The  "  Boys  in  Blue,"  a  book  which 
almost  revives  again  the  sacred  fury 
of  those  glorious  days,  shows  again  and 
again  how  utterly  false  and  futile  are 
the  old  dogmas  of  woman's  sphere, — how 
quickly  they  shrivel  in  the  ardor  of 
a  purpose  or  a  passion,  —  how  woman's 
sphere  comprises  everything  that  needs 
to  be  done  and  that  she  can  do.  Men 
went  out  to  fight,  and  women  went  out 
to  heal;  and  the  fighting  men  became 
women  in  weakness  and  tenderness  and 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  191 

gratitude  and  love;  and  the  healing  wo- 
men became  men  in  strength  and  sup- 
port and  consolation  ;  and  both  were 
never  more  divinely  themselves.  Let 
me  give  from  many  stories  one,  —  the 
story  of  Mother  Bickerdyke. 

"^Mother'  was  the  sobriquet  of  this 
extraordinary  woman  throughout  the  en- 
tire Western  army.  In  General  Sher- 
man's old  corps  (the  Fifteenth)  she  seemed 
to  be  the  individual  mother  of  every 
man  in  the  ranks.  The  prairie-plough 
and  the  thunder-storm  were  needed,  and 
they  came  in  the  person  of  Mrs.  Bicker- 
dyke.  A  pythoness  if  her  precious  boys, 
as  she  called  them,  were  assaulted,  she 
was  gentle  and  tender  as  a  loving  mother 
to  every  sick  and  wounded  soldier.  Woe 
be  to  the  man,  no  matter  what  his  rank, 
who  trampled  on  the  rights  of  the  ^boys 
in  blue.'  Faithful  surgeons  praised  her, 
and  relied  upon  her  skill,  strength,  and 


192  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

tenderness.  Those  who  were  the  reverse 
cursed  her^  and  clamored  for  her  re- 
moval  Her   efforts   not   only    saved 

unnumbered  lives  and  mitigated  untold 
sufferings  in  her  own  hospitals,  but,  by 
the  example  they  afforded  to  others,  be- 
came schools  of  instruction.  Her  huge 
organized  laundries  saved  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  dollars  to  the  government 
and  to  the  Sanitary  Commission,  by  wash- 
ing what  would  otherwise  have  been  de- 
stroyed, to  say  nothing  of  the  health 
and  comfort  they  bestowed  upon  the  sick. 
She  was  herculean  in  strength,  and  in- 
domitable in  will,  and  possessed  the  most 
extraordinary  endurance.  She  saw  no 
lions  in  the  way,  admitted  the  existence 
of  no  obstacles,  —  naming  what  others 
would  regard  as  such  'cobwebs,'  —  and 
these  she  demolished  with  nonchalant 
and  invincible  energy.  The  surgeons 
admitted  that  she  had  no  rival  in  extern- 


WOMAN'S  WEONGS.  193 

porizing,  organizing,  and  running  hospi- 
tals  The  great  military  men  —  Grant, 

Sherman,  McPherson,  Thomas,  Logan  — 
were  her  firm  friends,  and  supplied  her 

with  facilities  to  carry  on  her  work 

She  soon  discovered  a  disposition  to  mis- 
appropriate sanitary  stores,  and  raised 
her  first  tempest  in  the  Brick  Hospital  at 
Cairo.  A  fine  box  of  supplies  had  been 
consigned  to  her  at  Galesburg,  conspicu- 
ovisly  marked  with  the  name  of  the  so- 
ciety that  sent  them.  She  gave  a  certain 
number  of  shirts,  socks,  and  slippers  to 
a  ward-master  to  distribute.  The  next 
morning,  in  going  her  rounds,  she  per- 
ceived this  official  wearing  a  Sanitary 
shirt,  broadly  marked,  while  one  of  his 
sick  patients  was  minus  his  clean  one. 
'  Where  did  you  get  that  shirt  ? '  she  said 
fiercely.  '  It 's  none  of  your  business,' 
he  answered.  ^I'll  see  if  it  isn't,'  she 
replied ;  and  seizing  it,  as  he  had  no  coat 

13 


194  WOMAN'S  WKONGS. 

on,  she  drew  it  over  the  head  of  the  un- 
fortunate wight,  stunned  into  silence. 
^Now  let  me  see  your  feet/  said  she, 
stooping  and  taking  one  in  her  hand. 
OiF  came  the  socks  and  slippers  in  a 
twinkling,  to  the  infinite  delight  of  the 
patients.  The  denuded  thief  slunk  off 
suddenly,  a  sadder  and  a  wiser  man,  and 
Mrs.  B.  had  no   further  trouble  in  this 

hospital  concerning  Sanitary  stores 

She  was  matron  of  the  large  and  com- 
plete hospital  at  Corinth,  which  occupied 
the  female  academy  of  that  place,  beauti- 
fully situated  on  rising  ground,  with  a 
large  addition  of  hospital  tents.  She 
had  established  in  the  building  a  fine 
diet  kitchen  and  laundry,  and  was  run- 
ning the  entire  concern  with  her  custom- 
ary success,  when  the  battle  commenced, 
and  was  fought,  on  the  3d  and  4th  of  Oc- 
tober, 1862.  So  perfect  and  comprehen- 
sive was  the  system,  that,  notwithstand- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  195 

ing  the  immense  and  sudden  influx  of 
wounded  during  the  battle,  and  sick  and 
wounded  Rebels  left  on  our  hands  at  its 
conclusion,  it  was  said  that  perfect  order 
was  maintained,  and  every  man  attended 

properly The  medical  staff  were  in 

a  spasm  of  delight  over  a  feat  she  had 
just  accomplished.  The  small-pox  hos- 
pital  had   become   a  charnel-house,  and 

there  seemed  none  to  regenerate  it 

She  at  once  took  charge  of  the  revolt- 
ing place.  An  ordinary  thunder-storm 
would  be  powerless  here,  and  she  cre- 
ated an  earthquake ;  ran  the  prairie- 
plough  through  the  filthy  grounds  and 
out-houses,  overturning  cots,  and  ....  in 
three  weeks  had  a  pure,  clean  hospital, 
where  few  men  died,  and  all  were  made 
as  comfortable  as  the  loathsome  disease 

would  permit In  the  spring  of  1864 

she  came  North  to  carry  out  a  character- 
istic Bickerdj^ke   project.     She   declared 


196  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

the  boys  in  hospital  must  have  fresh  milk, 
and  nothing  but  cows  could  give  it ;  and 
they  must  be  solicited  from  the  Western 
farmers^  and  taken  down  to  Memphis. 
And  then  she  wanted  hundreds  of  hens 
to  lay  fresh  eggs  for  the  sick.  The  Com- 
mission consented  to  the  plan,  and  agreed 
to  furnish  transportation  for  the  cows  and 

hens Mrs.  B.  procured  eighty  cows 

and  several  hundred  hens,  and  they  were 

transmitted  to  her  at  Memphis She 

remained  with  Sherman's  army  through 
the  entire  series  of  its  brilHant  victories 
and  bloody  fights,  receiving  and  caring 
for  its  wounded,  running  and  consoli- 
dating hospitals,  superintending  laun- 
dries  She  superintended  the  cook- 
ing of  hundreds  of  tons  of  sanitary  stores 

and  vegetables If  in   her  journeys 

she  found  men  suffering  with  wounds 
festering  for  lack  of  clean  bandages,  her 
own  clothing  was  torn   into  strips,  and 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  197 

her  own  night-dresses  taken  for  clean 
covering  for  the  poor  emaciated  sol- 
diers  No  exigencies  baffled  her  skill 

and  self-denial." 

I  should  like  to  see  Dr.  Todd  tiptoeing 
up  to  Mother  Bickerdyke  and  telling  her 
that  her  happiness  consisted  in  her  de- 
pendence as  wife,  mother,  and  daughter  1 

Was  she  an  exception  to  the  general 
rule?  Were  the  thousands  upon  thou- 
sands of  women  who  worked  in  the 
ranks  of  this  great  army  of  healers  ex- 
ceptions ?  And  were  the  men  who 
worked  with  them  and  found  them 
helpers  exceptions? 

We  cannot  always  have  a  war  in  which 
to  fuse  our  prejudices  and  pueriHties, 
but  we  might  learn  from  our  experience 
during  this  one  war  that  wifehood  and 
motherhood  are  set  within  no  narrow 
bounds,  depend  upon  no  external  condi- 
tions, but  spring  from  the  heart,  inhere 
in   the   nature.     With   all   this   glowing 


198  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

past  just  behind  us,  liow  can  men  stand 
up  and  preach  their  triviahties  ?  See- 
ing how  mightily  and  steadfastly  love 
wrought  through  those  bloody  years,  why 
do  they  not  bring  love  to  the  solution 
of  the  problem  now?  If  it  could  heal 
the  wounds  of  war,  why  can  it  not  heal 
the  wounds  of  peace  ?  Why  fumble 
about  among  earth-forces  and  leave  out 
of  the  reckoning  the  one  force  of  Heav- 
en, stronger  than  all  ?  Is  motherhood 
ceasing  to  be  honored  ?  It  is  because 
you  have  robbed  it  of  its  honor,  you 
have  plundered  it  of  its  element  from 
heaven,  and  left  only  the  base  residuum 
of  earth.  Eestore  to  it  that  which  alone 
can  give  it  sweetness.  Only  love  and 
hope  and  joy  wait  upon  the  offspring 
of  love  and  hope  and  joy,  and  the  soul 
that  springs  from  any  other  source  is  it- 
self a  monstrosity, — the  guilt  and  shame 
of  the  authors  of  its  being. 

To  be   a  mother  is  of  itself  neither 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  199 

great  nor  high.  It  furnishes  the  oppor- 
tunity for  much  loving  and  large  living, 
but  in  itself  it  is  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other.  Mere  natural  maternity  is  a  fact 
of  no  moral  significance  whatever.  The 
best  mother  shares  it  in  common  with 
the  worst,  and  with  all  the  lower  crea- 
tion. It  does  not  necessarily  even  im- 
prove the  character.  It  may  be  absolute- 
ly bare  of  virtue  and  of  grace.  It  may 
spring  from  vice  and  crime,  and  end  in 
shame  and  woe.  To  give  life  to  a  sen- 
tient being,  without  being  able  to  make 
provision  to  turn  life  to  the  best  ac- 
count, —  to  give  life,  careless  whether  it 
will  be  bale  or  boon  to  the  recipient, — 
is  the  sin  of  sins.  Every  other  sin  mars 
what  it  finds.  This  makes  what  it  mars. 
A  motherhood  that  exalts  the  nature, 
that  brings  the  soul  closer  to  all  human- 
ity, and  so  interprets  to  it  God,  is  wor- 
shipful indeed.     A  motherhood  petty  and 


200  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

selfish,  narrowing  itself  down  to  meet 
only  the  demands  and  discern  only  the 
excellences  of  its  own  offspring,  separat- 
ing itself  from,  instead  of  allying  itself 
to,  its  kind,  is  evil,  and  that  continually. 

There  is  more  to  be  learned  of  the  true 
spirit,  the  ultimate  import  of  marriage, 
from  the  co-operation  of  man  and  woman 
in  the  late  war,  than  from  all  the  elab- 
orate discourses  through  which  it  has 
been  trailed  -,  for  marriage  is  a  friendship 
of  the  sexes  so  profound,  so  comprehen- 
sive, that  it  includes  the  whole  being. 
The  inflow  of  the  divine  life, 

"  Bright  effluence  of  bright  essence  increate," 

blends  the  man  nature  and  the  woman 
nature  into  an  absolute  oneness,  which 
shapes  itself  ever  thereafter  into  the  only 
perfect  symmetry.  Thus  alone  comes  hu- 
manity in  the  unity  of  the  faith,  and  of  the 
knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God,  unto  a  per- 
fect man,  unto  the  measure  of  the  stature 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  201 

of  the  fulness  of  Christ  Thus  marriage 
forever  tends  to  its  own  annihilation, — 
not  the  annihilation  of  a  stream  swal- 
lowed up  in  desert  sands,  but  of  a  river 
broadening  to  the  boundless  sea.  The 
more  perfect  its  substance  the  more 
yielding  its  form.  As  it  gathers  power 
it  diminishes  pomp,  till,  by  a  pathway 
which  the  vulture's  eye  hath  not  seen 
and  never  can  see,  marriage  itself  leads 
to  the  land  where  they  neither  marry 
nor  are  given  in  marriage. 

Wherever  man  pays  reverence  to  wo- 
man, —  wherever  any  man  feels  the  influ- 
ence of  any  woman,  purifying,  chasten- 
ing, abashing,  strengthening  him  against 
temptation,  shielding  him  from  evil,  min- 
istering to  his  self-respect,  medicining  his 
weariness,  peopling  his  soHtude,  winning 
him  from  sordid  prizes,  enlivening  his 
monotonous  days  with  mirth,  or  fancy,  or 
wit,  flashing  heaven  upon  his  earth,  and 


202  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

mellowing  it  for  all  spiritual  fertility, — < 
there  is  the  element  of  marriage.  Wher- 
ever woman  pays  reverence  to  man, — 
wherever  any  woman  rejoices  in  the 
strength  of  any  man,  feels  it  to  be 
God's  agent,  upholding  her  weakness, 
confirming  her  purpose,  and  crowning 
her  power, — wherever  he  reveals  himself 
to  her,  just,  upright,  inflexible,  yet  toler- 
ant, merciful,  benignant,  not  unruffled, 
perhaps,  but  not  overcome  by  the  world's 
turbulence,  and  responding  to  all  her 
gentleness,  his  feet  on  the  earth,  his  head 
among  the  stars,  helping  her  to  hold  her 
soul  steadfast  in  right,  to  stand  firm 
against  the  encroachments  of  frivolity, 
vanity,  impatience,  fatigue,  and  discour- 
agement, helping  to  preserve  her  good- 
nature, to  develop  her  energy,  to  con- 
solidate her  thought,  to  utilize  her 
benevolence,  to  exalt  and  illumine  her 
life,  —  there  is  the  essence  of  marriage. 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  203 

Its  love  is  founded  on  respect^  and  in- 
creases self-respect  at  the  very  moment 
of  merging  self  in  another.  Its  love  is 
mutual,  equally  giving  and  receiving  at 
every  instant  of  its  action.  There  is 
neither  dependence  nor  independence, 
but  inter  -  dependence.  Years  cannot 
weaken  its  bonds,  distance  cannot  sun- 
der them.  It  is  a  love  which  van- 
quishes the  grave,  and  transfigures  death 
itself  into  life. 

The  current  of  human  progress  is  un- 
doubtedly—  perhaps  has  always  been  — 
setting  in  this  direction.  Its  motion  is 
slow,  sometimes  apparently  backward, 
but  never  permanently  checked.  Every 
legal  enactment  that  tends  to  equalize 
the  sexes,  to  give  husband  and  wife  the 
same  position  before  the  law,  smooths 
the  way  for  the  desired  end.  Every  ele- 
vated friendship  between  a  man  and  a 
woman  prefigures   it.     All   the  subjuga- 


204  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

tions  of  the  marriage  rite  and  of  com- 
mon law  are  against  it.  Everything 
which  coerces  that  whose  only  value 
lies  in  its  freedom  is  an  obstruction. 
So  long  as  the  law  commands  subor- 
dination, it  forbids  the  grace  of  a  spon- 
taneous deference.  Man  never  will  be 
truly  monarch,  till  woman  of  her  own 
will  places  the  crown  on  his  brow;  and 
that  she  will  never  do  till  her  will  is 
free.  Each  being  in  a  false  relation  to 
the  other,  there  will  be  constant  an- 
tagonism where  there  ought  to  be  un- 
broken harmony.  They  will  hinder  and 
irritate  where  they  ought  to  help  and 
soothe.  Man  may  have  mastery  by 
strength  of  thew  and  sinew;  but  he 
masters  only  thew  and  sinew.  The  fine 
spirit  escapes  him.  The  subtile  soul, 
bruised,  outraged,  deformed,  but  defiant, 
mocks  him  from  afar. 

So  long  as  the  tendencies  of  growth, 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  205 

however  feeble  and  awry,  are  to  fill 
out  the  empty  shell  of  marriage  with 
true  spiritual  richness,  we  may  hold  our 
peace.  But  when  our  preachers  and 
teachers  come  to  us  and  set  down  this 
empty  shell  square  in  the  -oath  of  pro- 
gress, and  say,  "  This  is  all,  —  all  that 
has  been,  all  that  shall  be  all  that  God 
intendea  ever  snouid  oe,^  the  stones  may 
cry  out  upon  them.  It  is  the  very  priests 
thrusting  God  from  his  most  holy  temple. 
It  is  the  ministers  of  that  Gospel  which 
emancipates  woman  from  centuries  of 
servihty,  remanding  her  to  her  burdens. 
Christ  made  no  distinction,  but  opened 
the  door  wide  to  woman  as  to  man. 
These  restrict  her  to  a  single  form  of 
service,  while  oppressing  her  with  a  thou- 
sand forms  of  servitude.  They  subordi- 
nate her  best  uses  to  her  lowest  func- 
tions. They  degrade  her  into  a  hewer 
of   wood   and   a   drawer   of  water,   and 


206  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

add  blasphemy  to  falsehood  with  a  "  thus 
saith  the  Lord." 

And  yet  men  in  their  errors  are  not 
wholly  w^ithout  excuse.  They  have  a 
dim  sense  of  the  truth  uttered,  yet 
hardly  revealed,  in  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures, that  man  was  formed  of  the  dust 
of  the  ground,  but  woman  was  formed 
of  man.  His  origin  is  the  dull  insensate 
clod ;  hers,  the  clod  already  vivified  and 
humanized.  The  material  for  his  work- 
manship is  pre-eminently  the  earth,  hers 
humanity.  His  diamond  is  in  the  rough, 
hers   has    already  taken  its-  first   polish. 

Men,  in  their  reiterated  and  wearisome 
injunctions  to  women  to  be  wives,  moth- 
ers, and  housekeepers,  are  following,  af- 
ter a  stumbling  and  uncertain  fashion, 
the  glimmer  of  this  truth.  Feeling,  in 
some  blind,  instinctive  sort,  that  woman's 
work  is  other  and  higher  than  theirs, 
they  know  no  better  way  to  further  it 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  207 

than  to  bind  manacles  on  her  wrists,  and 
set  her  to  doing  what  they  interpret  to 
be  her  divinely  appointed  task.  Women 
will  but  fall  into  the  corresponding  er- 
ror, if  in  the  release  from  restraint  they 
forget  for  a  time  that  for  them  all 
forced  physical  labor  is  but  the  least  of 
many  evils.  It  is  better  to  dig  than  to 
beg ;  but  it  is  only  a  fatal  misunderstand- 
ing of  needs,  and  a  most  extravagant 
misapplication  of  forces,  that  reduces  wo- 
man to  the  alternative  of  digging  or 
begging.  Any  coarse  manual  work  is 
better  than  idleness ;  but  it  is  only  be- 
cause we  have  as  yet  so  little  knowledge 
of  real  social  science  that  any  woman  is 
doomed  to  coarse  manual  work  as  a 
refuge  from  idleness.  The  fields  which 
women  alone  can  reap  are  white  already 
to  harvest ;  the  laborers  are  few,  because 
society  is  not  yet  clear-eyed  enough  to 
see   the   fruit   that   ripens   there.      Men 


208  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

do  not  know  there  is  any  such  harvest. 
The  very  fields  are  to  them  but  "fence- 
less fields  of  air."  So  the  hands  that 
were  divinely  fashioned  for  this  doing 
are  set  to  unhandsome  service.  Woman 
is  largely  occupied  with  man's  work. 
In  the  sweat  of  her  face  she  eats  bread. 
It  is  like  taking  a  Damascus  blade  to 
hew  timber  withal.  Never  can  she  do 
her  own  work  till  man  lifts  from  her 
shoulders  the  burden  that  belongs  to 
his.  A  large  part  of  the  labor  which 
he  assigns  her  as  from  God  is  as  real- 
ly foreign  to  her  "sphere"  as  the  field- 
work  which  he  denounces.  It  matters 
not  whether  woman  be  out  of  doors  or 
in ;  hanging  on  yard-arms  or  bending 
over  a  cooking-stove.  All  wearing  phys- 
ical labor  is  unsuited  to  her.  All  en- 
forced muscular  work  beyond  what  is 
necessary  to  her  own  symmetrical  devel- 
opment is  the  result  of  defective  human 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  209 

arrangement^  not  of  perfect  Divine  es- 
tablishment. Yet^  with  all  their  talk,  so 
unconscious  are  men  of  woman's  true 
work,  that  when  you  take  away  all  that 
does  not  belong  to  it,  all  which  is  a 
hindrance  to  it,  most  of  them  will  think 
you  have  left  only  idleness.  Their  eyes 
are  holden  that  they  do  not  see.  It  is 
so  impalpable,  so  intangible  to  every- 
thing but  instinct,  that  it  defies  delinea- 
tion. It  is  as  pervasive,  but  also  as 
evasive,  as  religion.  Its  conditions  are 
comfort,  freedom,  serenity.  Its  antago- 
nists are  toil,  weariness,  anxiety.  Its  right 
is  to  be  ministered  unto  in  carnal  things ; 
its  province  is  to  minister  in  spiritual 
things.  But  it  is  dumb.  It  has  no 
voice.  It  accomplishes  all  things  in  si- 
lence, choosing  rather  to  die  than  give 
a  sign.  Motherliness  may  best  express 
its  source,  but  it  is  motherliness,  not  as  a 
biographical  incident,  but  as  an  essential 

14 


210  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

attribute.  Let  the  mother's  character, 
the  mother's  work,  be  the  true  character 
and  work  of  woman ;  but  not  that  nar- 
row kind  held  within  the  mere  hteral 
words.  That  is  but  a  type,  a  symbol. 
Wherever  there  is  weakness  to  be  suc- 
cored, hurt  to  be  healed,  good  to  be 
done,  grace  to  be  shown,  there  is  mother's 
love  to  lavish,  there  is  mother's  work  to 
do.  The  ideal  woman  feels  that  all  the 
children  of  want,  —  bodily,  mental,  mor- 
al want,  the  infant  of  days  or  the  man 
bowed  with  age,  —  all  are  children  whom 
the  Lord  has  given  her,  and  over  a  wide 
and  ever-widening  circle  beams  the  radi- 
ance of  her  spotless  motherhood.  If  she 
has  not  first  created  the  claims  which 
she  satisfies,  if  she  has  not  herself  evoked 
the  responsibilities  which  she  discharges, 
she  does  but  diffuse,  without  diminishing, 
the  love  which  would  otherwise  have 
been  concentrated.     She  misses  the  nar- 


WOMAN'S  WRONGS.  211 

rower,  only  to  find  tlie  larger  life.  She 
looks  to  no  future  reaping  as  a  reward 
for  her  sowing,  counts  upon  no  material 
revenue,  but  finds  her  delight  in  her  do- 
ing, and  gathers,  as  she  goes,  abundant 
spiritual  harvests.  Thanks,  gratitude,  ad- 
miration, are  but  the  tithe  c/f  her  meed. 
That  feeble  hands  stretch  out  implor- 
ingly to  her,  that  blind  eyes  turn  wist- 
fully whenever  her  footfall  sounds,  that 
fainting  hearts  and  bounding  hearts  re- 
ly instinctively  on  her  sympathy,  —  this 
is  her  constant,  silent  blessedness.  Her 
world  may  be  large  or  small,  but  she  is 
mother  of  its  best  manhood.  She  calls 
forth  whatever  is  pure,  noble,  tender, 
whatever  is  manliest  in  man.  Evil 
shrinks  away  abashed  before  her  steps. 
Discord  attunes  itself  to  melody  charmed 
by  the  music  of  her  voice.  Women  thrill 
to  her  revelation  of  their  own  highest 
nature.      Men   yield    enraptured   to   the 


212  WOMAN'S  WRONGS. 

spell  of  her  sweet  unlikeness.  In  the 
large  helpfulness,  the  irresistible  attrac- 
tion of  her  life,  she  bodies  forth  all  that 
woman  will  be  to  man,  all  that  man  will 
receive  from  woman,  all  the  honor  where- 
with he  shall  crown  her  in  the  day  of 
their  yet  distant  espousals. 


THE  END. 


Cambridge  :  Stereotyped  and  Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co. 


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